Our Commitment to Sustainable, Eco-Friendly Furniture
At furniture.co.uk, we’re committed to sustainable furniture. Our team is constantly innovating and looking for new ways to reduce our impact on the environment. However, one of the most fundamental differences between oursel… read more +
At furniture.co.uk, we’re committed to sustainable furniture. Our team is constantly innovating and looking for new ways to reduce our impact on the environment. However, one of the most fundamental differences between ourselves and other so-called sustainable furniture companies, is that our furniture is built to last.
By designing furniture that can truly last a lifetime, we eliminate the need to use more energy and resources replacing your furniture – with no need to send the old piece to landfill. That’s combined with a range of other measures to reduce our impact on the environment. Take a look…
Sustainable Furniture Built to Last
Flat-pack furniture is sometimes hailed as an eco-friendly wonder. Why? It reduces transportation, as you can fit more into a truck to prevent additional delivery trips and fuel stops. Unfortunately, that benefit is usually negated by the fact that flat-pack furniture simply doesn’t last. Once it inevitably breaks, cracks or wears beyond belief, it ends up in landfills or incinerators.
At Furniture.co.uk, we take a different approach. Larger pieces of furniture like beds and wardrobes are delivered partially assembled, so we can get it to the exact room customers need it. However, the vast majority of our products are solid furniture. While we miss out on the marginal gain of flat-pack delivery, we move much closer to true eco furniture with our commitment to longevity.
By designing and crafting solid furniture, our eco-friendly pieces are much too good to throw away. Whether it’s upcycling to match a new design trend or finding a new home for furniture that still looks great, our sustainable furniture can easily have a second, third or fourth life.
Designing Eco Furniture
Longevity aside, it’s only natural that many customers want to know what goes into their eco furniture. Thankfully, the answer is pretty natural too. We use wood that’s been grown specifically for use in the manufacturing industry, from fast-growing trees like acacia and pine. This makes our furniture far more sustainable as the trees can be regrown and replaced in a shorter timeframe.
While we minimise the use of MDF, we don’t avoid it completely at a cost to the furniture’s lifespan – not to mention a cost to the customer. Instead, we make sure customers are protected from the potential off-gas of MDF by sealing, priming and painting the inside and outside of any MDF used on our furniture.
Rest assured, we also have our finger on the pulse when it coms to formaldehyde-free MDF. We hope to be one of the first sustainable furniture companies to make the switch as products become available. In the meantime, we’ll continue to protect our customers with a strict finishing process.
The Importance of Recycling
As a sustainable furniture company, recycling is of the utmost important to us. To cut down on the production of plastic and other materials, we’re proud to say we re-use packaging when delivering our furniture. Quite simply, packaging is used until we can’t use it anymore.
On top of that, we actively avoid using black shrink wrap unless it’s absolutely necessary – as we’re well aware how hard it is to recycle. We also use recycled thinner when spraying our furniture, and all of our waste thinner is recycled with help from Pure Clean Waste Solutions Ltd.
Crucially, this commitment to recycling extends to the furniture we design. On the rare occasion customers find a fault with their furniture, we’ll always collect the item for repair at our workshop in Lower Lydbrook. Customers receive a brand-new item to replace it, but most importantly, we’ll fix the broken or damaged furniture instead of throwing it away.
Eco-Friendly Changes Across the Board
Just because we don’t use throwaway flat-pack furniture, doesn’t mean we can’t reduce transport in other ways. All our delivery routes are assessed and plotted by our logistics team to minimise the total mileage and fuel use. Drivers also have sat nav systems to make sure they avoid any problems on the day.
That’s paired with a commitment to local recruitment. To cut down on commuting – and make the most of all the wonderful talent available on our doorstep – we always employ locally. This was even prioritised when we moved our headquarters, remaining local to our team so we could retain our staff without the need for more mileage.
We’ve even gone the extra mile inside our headquarters too. Our workshop has gone paperless, managed entirely using Trello, while our warehouse runs on a BlueBerry NFC scanning system.
Browse Our Furniture and See for Yourself
If you are as committed to sustainable, eco-friendly furniture as us, we invite you to browse furniture.co.uk and take a closer look. If you have any questions about our products or systems, please do not hesitate to ask.