Environmentally Responsible Furniture

Unlike most sofas, loveseats and chairs, our furniture is eco-friendly: Not throw-away, not going to the landfills after a relatively short life, and not bulky (in the way that requires large living spaces). The frames of typical seating in stores these days are stapled. together (no exaggeration there; read the labels yourself, if information is available at the store). The typical sofas made currently sometimes start falling apart after a few years, or the cushions or suspensions cave in, or the fabric looks shabby; and they usually costs so much to re-upholster and/or repair that most people discard them instead. Our customers, who normally place our eco-friendly furniture in the heavy-use areas of the home, call back after 6 to 20 years for their first set of replacement covers. They normally replace the cushion filling after 15 to 25 years. Despite our ten-year warranty and excellent service beyond that, we almost never hear of structural problems. (Two families bought their first replacement cushions after 24 or more years; one of those families had boys growing up, plus dogs.)

Other considerations: (1) We use only water-based (low VOC) wood finishes, including a final two coats of water-based polyurethane, (Once cured, these finishes are also harder, more durable and much more resistant to water and other household liquids than the cheaper, polluting, solvent-based finishes normally used in furniture production.) (2) Judging by what we have heard from many customers who have shopped very extensively, our furniture (with its numerous and non-bulky dimensions) is very unusual in being able to fit into living spaces that are small (and therefore more eco-friendly). (3) The foam and fiber filling in almost all sofas is non-biodegradable and non-recyclable, so the usual pattern of sending short-lived sofas (the typical kind sold in stores) to the landfills after not many years just keeps adding to the landfills, with their toxic drainage. (4) Compared with the effects of transporting upholstered furniture from the other side of the world (which includes a large and fast-growing percentage of what is in stores these days), the fossil fuels consumed and the emissions created in getting our furniture to our customers is small. (5) 99.9% of the glue that we use is water-based. The softwood plywood that we use for supplementary panels in our frames is "Plytanium" by Georgia-Pacific, which is APA rated, allowing only adhesives that are so low in emissions that they are exempt from formaldehyde regulations of U.S. HUD and the state of California. At a surcharge, we can substitute plywood that has no formaldehyde added. (6) For packing, in addition to cardboard we also use scrap cushioning foam and wadded newspapers; we don't buy plastic peanuts (although we re-use all kinds of clean padding that we receive). (7) Our cushion fillling does not contain PBDE's (polybrominated diphenyl ethers, a hazardous chemical sometimes used in foam cushioning). (8) The basic wood we use is oak, from North American forests, where it is plentiful. The solid oak that we use is FSC certified. To see the statement of Environmental Commitment by our hardwood lumber supplier, click here. (9) Latex foam cushion filling is an option on our furniture. (But it's an expensive option, and it would probably not last as well as the high-quality polyurethane foam that we use as our standard filling. As of early 2008, latex foam filling would add $600 to the price of a standard three-seat sofa.) (10) We have a wide selection of natural-fiber fabrics, mainly of 100% cotton (in addition to many synthetic fabrics), or the customer can provide his/her own material. But be aware that, as a rule, the synthetic fibers are more durable and cleanable than the natural fibers (with the exception of wool). (11) The polyurethane foam and polyester fiber used heavily in almost all sofas and chairs require large amounts of oil derivatives to produce, so our emphasis on furniture that won't need fo be replaced for decades helps avoid waste of non-renewable resources.

Does the short life of a typical sofa justify use of non-renewable resources, addition to global warming, increased pollution, and addition to the ever-growing landfills? It doesn't have to be that way.

Consider how much carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere when replacement short-life furniture is manufactured and transported from the distant manufacturer to your home, and when the discarded furniture is shipped to the (often remote) dump, with this cycle being repeated many times over the decades for a typical family. Even before the manufacturing stage are global warming effects from the extracting, processing and shipping of the raw materials to the manufacturer.

By comparison, purchasing furniture that lasts indefinitely, and replacing the cushion filling only every 15 to 25 years, is doing a good deed for our world and for its future occupants.

According to www.climatecrisis.org , you "... can save 1200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%." Of even greater significance than the end product in the landfills is the "trash behind" the product that the consumer buys: David de Rothschild points out that American industry puts out thirty times as much refuse as American individuals and families (Global Warming Survival Handbook, Rodale Press).

Even our fully-upholstered model has an unusually sturdy hardwood frame and is relatively easy and inexpensive to re-cover.

In a high percentage of cases, furniture made of hardwood in the Far East uses wood that originally came from the Americas, wood that is shipped twice half-way around the world, burning fossil fuel and emitting greenhouse gases in the process, not to mention inevitable oil spills and other pollutants released. Pollutants include substantial numbers of harmful invasive species dumped into our waterways (New York Times, 9/04/07, p. A23), as well as the unusually polluting emissions from burning the cheap fuel used in big ships ("Ocean-going ships spew pollution around the world" (The Free-Lance Star, Fredericksburg, VA, Nov. 7, 2007). All of this in order to take advantage of low Asian labor costs. Buying furniture imported from China that includes plywood is also likely to bring into your home considerable formaldehyde (a probable carcinogen, according to the EPA, and also a cause of headaches, nausea, allergic reactions and possibly damage to the nervous system), exceeding by up to 3000 percent the off-gassing standards set for that chemical by the U.S. government for American manufacturers (Woodshop News, Soundings Publications, Essex, CT, July, 2007, p. 48). This chemical and its off-gassing will later accumulate in our landfills, after the furniture has lived its often short life.

When you express your thoughts to your legislators, we urge you to push for "closed loop production systems," which are designed to make sure that manufacturers bear the costs of disposal of products they have made. Some other advanced countries are already adopting such requirements (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2007, p. 179). We would be delighted with passage of such laws, since our costs of meeting such a requirement would be very small, whereas almost all of our competitors would have to increase their prices dramatically in order to bear their products' disposal costs. When companies and their customers start having to pay the real, full costs of disposal of each bulky product that is sold, sales of disposable furniture (i.e., most upholstered furniture on the market) would probably plummet.

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To go (or return) to the Comfy 1 home page and much more information on our various eco-friendly designs, quality features, sofas, sectional sofas, and prices (on individual product pages), click here.