Just a quick one from me...

This manufacturer, LOLL design, not only do they have some amazing responsible features for their outdoor products but they also display their eco initiatives (which are AWESOME) as well as displaying their product content info for all to see ... RIGHT ON LOLL. Keep up the good work!

http://www.lolldesigns.com/materials.php

I have been reading this great book, Environmentally Responsible Design, and have come to the chapter about waste. Not just the process of discarding a product at the end of it's life cycle, but the actual waste from a manufacturing process that a consumer may not grasp when selecting a product for use.

This book describes how  processing has changed through the centuries and has become increasingly more destructive to the environment (as we all know)... An example they talk about in this book is mining for gold. Think about it.... Miners way back when, used to go out in their Levi's with the screen bottom pans and sift (by hand) through the water and mud to find their treasures. These days, industrial practices have taken the miners place. Instead,  they use a process called "heap- leaching" where tons of land is dug up and chemically sifted with liquid cyanide, to extract the tiniest of gold pebbles... In some cases up to 30 tons of rock and dirt are displaced which many times only has 1 ounce of gold. Once the gold is removed, the dirt and rock are displaced and the cyanide solution is stored in open, lined ponds. I mean really... what is going on??

Another example:

Ok.. So I have mustered up the courage to blog. This, my friends, is the very first blog entry I have ever written in my life and is also the first for Furnicology.

So here it goes... Let me tell you a bit about how I got here. Working as an interior designer for years now, I have been pushing manufacturers and reps for sustainable products whether it was encouraging them to create a product that was more environmentally responsible to requesting that they use alternate materials in existing products. I was eager to see more options for the hospitality and residential design world. As we have this influx of new environmentally responsible products, the next challenge I found is making these pieces easily accessible to not only us Sustainable folks but also to the conventional designer and consumer.

Sustainable design someday will become just "design". The sustainable factor will become a standard practice and will be just as common as evaluating a piece for its functionality or aesthetic. It will come as a design practice... However, at this point, we are not there yet. Sustainable design should be  something people understand and WANT to do. For many it is truly a major transition in the way they think and design and in order to encourage others to make the transition, there needs to be the resources available to make this transition as easy as possible. Sustainable design needs to be as accessible as conventional design, and thats why Furnicology was born.