green designs within reach.

in the span of eight days i received new catalogs from 2 of my favourite furniture retailers--design within reach and mitchell gold+bob williams. flipping through the first couple pages i noticed both merchants declared their smart ideas and promises for both offering and maintaining eco-friendly products.

i especially love what mitchell and bob say in their eco-statement: "we've been eco-friendly since 1989. not since it became fashionable." they also recognize being eco-friendly is not only a privilege but their responsibility. i can appreciate that.

they demonstrate their claim in the makeup of their pieces. their seat cushions are wrapped up in 80 percent regenerated fibers and 10 percent soy. they use fabrics like cotton, linen, mohair, and hemp--all natural fibers. a large part of their casegoods--chests, dressers, tables--are built from parawood (also called rubberwood). but the parawood trees aren't harvested until they stop producing sap. how awesome is that? totally utilizing the tree's resources. and finally, the best of all: their back pillows are composed of fibers that came from plastic bottles.

seems to me mitchell and bob are living up to their promise.

in addition to already focusing their eco-friendly efforts on their products, they're working with the climate project, a non-profit dedicated to creating the opportunity to move our nation into action. with every purchase of fine art photography by tipper gore a portion will benefit the movement.

now on to design within reach (dwr). (i don't really get why it's called what it is because as i browse through the pages there is little i can afford. in fact, i'm not sure i can even afford one of their lightbulbs.)

their assortment of eco-friendly products is conveniently listed on their solutions page. categories are: energy efficient, green guard certified, recyclable products, recyclable materials, sustainable materials. this will enable you to find just what you're looking for based upon your environmental goal or vision.

dwr says being conscious of the environment has always been part of their vision and assortment of products but now they've set up categories so it's easier for the buyer--you!--to find just what s/he is looking for. genius.

my favourite of the green dwr products is first in their "what is green?" catalog. the page boasts "green is up-cycling cans into a chair that lasts 150 years." the chair it's speaking of is the 1006 navy chair by emeco. back in 1944 when emeco started designing chairs, you can bet your hybrid marketing slogans encouraging him to make it appealing to the eco-conscious weren't floating around the design board. he was more focused on guaranteeing it could withstand a torpedo blast. to satisfy the military crazy request, emeco created a 77-step patented process. during the process, emeco invented a method to make aluminum three times stronger than steel. a chair so unbelievably durable its estimated lifespan is 150 years. legend has it the maker of the 1006 navy chair, wilton dinges, the founder of emeco in 1944, actually tossed the chair out the window of a 6-story building. aside from startling the people on the street and a few scratches, the chair didn't show any damage.

the 1006 navy chair has gone down in history as one of the most revered, respected, and wanted chairs. wanted so much that target even copied it opening the chair's distribution to the more general public at $249.99 compared to the original price of $395.00-1,115.00 by authorized dealers. the copy at target caused a real stir. target doesn't outright claim their cafe aluminum side chair to be a copy of the 1006 navy chair, of course; in the description it simply says it's of classic design. true. (when i searched the site i couldn't find cafe aluminum side chair. all the search produced was this barstool. look familiar? perhaps at the time of the washingtonpost.com article it was still on target.com. i don't have any major issues with copies. my issue would be they're likely to not have the same green makeup as the higher priced original. something to consider.) to set the original apart from copies, three small welds are left exposed on the back slats. (as if paying the original price wasn't enough of a clue.)

another beautiful tidbit about the emeco 1006 navy chair is it starts out with 80 percent recycled aluminum which requires only 5 percent the energy needed to produce virgin aluminum. and the factory is here in the united states! pennsylvania even.

good stuff.

live simply.

note: the awesome catalogs i received from dwr and mitchell gold+bob williams are both printed on 100 percent recycled products. fsc-certified even for dwr.