Posts Tagged ‘home furnishings’

Make Your Home Greener

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

If you’re always on the prowl for ways of making your home greener, you’ve most likely come across this post title before. Despite the title of this post suggesting it’s a standard ‘make your home greener’ post, it’s not.

The majority of the other posts are based on improving your home and how you can save money in the process. They tend to talk about the basics like having loft insulation, not leaving appliances on standby, double glazing, things like that. This post is all about what you can do to help the environment after all those things.

Although you may have stopped your home from wasting large amounts of energy, there is one aspect you may have forgotten. Every so often we decide to redecorate our homes, this often leads to changes in everything from wallpaper to bathroom accessories. This is where you can make some improvements.

When buying new furniture, you rarely think about the environmental consequences. I guess it’s it’s hard enough finding something your family all likes, without it being green too. But when you take some time to think about it, alot of energy is used in making these items. They tend to be constructed in large factories which waste large amounts of energy, they are then shipped back to the UK after being made abroad.

Fortunately, due to everyone becoming more aware of our impact on the environment, many retailers are offering greener, more eco-friendly home furnishings.

From everything from tableware to kitchen accessories, there are lots of products out there that you can buy that are better for the environment. All these little things, and big things, that you need to buy for your home have an impact on the environment. This is something that you should remember next time you go to furnish your home. Stopping your home from wasting energy isn’t the only way you can reducing the impact on the planet. Although it can’t be avoided with some home accessories, you’d be surprised at how many you really can buy that are more environmentally friendly.

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Is Bamboo the Sustainable Material of the Future?

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Ok, so the Bamboo PC was just an eco promotion. The laptop launched at the Hanover computer fair last March, with a laminated bamboo casing around a pretty conventional computer won’t make a dent in the rising tide of plastics sold around the world.

Despite not having any major eco benefits to the bamboo computers, they did give a good demonstration of what can be done with a material that versatile.

Bamboo must be the only raw material that can be used as food, clothing and building materials. One of Edison’s early light bulbs had a carbonised bamboo filament. Its strength and low price tag makes it a great material for building, particularly in parts of Asia where it’s used as scaffolding. The fibres within bamboo poles have both high tension strength, as well as high compression strength. It’s compressive strength works out around twice that of concrete, bamboo also has the same tensile strength to weight ratio as steel. Now there’s even a bamboo laptop!

Bamboo products ticks almost all boxes for anyone looking to purchase eco-friendly home furnishings. To begin with, it’s an extremely sustatinable material. Some species of bamboo grow at more than a metre every day. Local people can cut down as much as they need for carving, weaving, sawing or splitting and still have as big a forest at the end of the year as they had at the start. As for the global warming question, because the bamboo is a plant, anything that’s been made from it contains a large proportion of atmospheric carbon. However, the plastic equivalent to a bamboo products actually adds to the atmospheric carbon levels, rather than taking away!

Another point; due to bamboo being a natural material, it has a number of variations in quality, size and appearance, all of these differences make it difficult to work with as part of a mass production line. As a result, this means that the bamboo products you buy are most likely hand crafted by skilled craftsman. If you choose to buy from a reputable source, you’ll also have the peace of mind that the craftsman has earned a fair wage from their work and not been exploited. The last thing is that you can be sure that your purchased product won’t have accumulated any air miles since it’s creation.

With eco credentials this strong, it’s a surprise bamboo built products are so beautiful. Just picture a hand crafted bamboo box, layered 15 times with natural shellac. All natural and really stylish. I recently picked up a beautifully crafted bamboo knife block and am seriously considering following suit with other bamboo kitchen accessories like salad bowls. Stylish and ethical. Win. ;)

 

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Mobile Phone Goes Green

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

So many things are now going green and now the mobile phone is set to hit the market too.

If you appliances already have the energy star they are deemed to be green and of course you have the option of going green when it comes to the car thanks to the hybrid. However when buying your next mobile is there an option out there for somebody who wants to save the world?

Well unbelievably there is and it comes in the form of Samsung and Sprint teaming up. The new mobile phone is actually made from corn and 80% of recyclable materials are used. You have to question why this hasn’t been done before though? Now that most people in the developed world own at least one mobile phone, it seems crazy why this sort of thing wasn’t released sooner!

The phone charger itself has the energy star on it and some of the applications on the phones are even put on there beforehand to make you a greener person. The Discvoery Channel have pre-loaded apps onto there to help turn you into an even greater greener person. There is also a glossary on there explaining things on climate changes.

This isn’t the end of it for this phone, it is also a smartphone with GPS, you get to browse the web and it even has speech recognition. What this shows is that technology seems to be jumping ahead at a very alarming rate.

Of course it doesn’t just have to stop on the phone, you can buy so many different things for the home that are green and eco-friendly now whether that is accessories for the kitchen as well as eco bathroom accessories So whatever eco friendly furnishings you are looking to change there is always something out there for you to choose.Whatever will they come up with next. Technology is wonderful, but where will it all end?

 

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The Mobile Phone Goes Green

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

So many things are now going green and it now looks like the mobile phone is set to join the ranks.

All appliances with the energy star are already deemed to be green and you even have the option of going green when it comes to the car thanks to the hybrid. However, when looking at purchasing your next mobile, will there be an option out there for somebody who wants to save the world?

Well unbelievably there is and it comes in the form of Samsung and Sprint teaming up. This new phone is actually made from corn and is made up from 80% recyclable materials. The real question is, why hasn’t this been done before? Now that most people in the developed world seem to own at least one mobile phone, it seems crazy why this sort of phone hasn’t been released earlier!

The phone charger itself has the energy star on it and some of the applications on the phones are even put on there beforehand to make you a greener person. Pre-loaded apps from the Discovery Channel have been put on there to help turn you into a greener person as a whole. They have even introduced a glossary to help explain things on climate changes.

This isn’t it for this phone, it is also a smartphone that has GPS, Web browsing and speech recognition. What this shows is that technology seems to be jumping ahead at a very alarming rate.

Of course it doesn’t just have to stop on the phone, you can buy so many different things for the home that are green and eco-friendly now whether that is accessories for the kitchen as well as bathroom accessories So whatever homeware you are looking to change there is always something out there for you to choose.It makes you wonder what they will think of next. Technology is wonderful, but where will it all end?

 

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