As you may have seen in our recent Instagram posts, we recently made the big move across the country from Southern California all the way to Maine. In an attempt to lighten our moving truck load, we didn’t take everything with us and we have needed to purchase several large furniture pieces for our new home out of necessity (ok, ok and for fun too). All of a sudden, we became very aware of several aspects of purchasing furniture that we hadn’t been aware of before. Since we were primarily shopping online for furniture, we were very concerned with the packaging and shipping of our new furniture pieces on top of production. In an effort to reduce the environmental/ecological footprint I started researching about it online in an attempt to be as knowledgeable about it as possible.
Ecological Footprint
ec·o·log·i·cal foot·print / noun
- the impact of a person or community on the environment, expressed as the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources.
During my online research I happened across an article from InteriorBeat titled: A Step Closer to Furniture’s Environmental Footprint. In the article, the topic of the furniture industry impact on our environment was discussed. Did you know that the global market size for eco-friendly furniture in 2020 was estimated to be 36.9 billion USD and expected to increase by +60% to 59.82 billion USD in 2027?
However, the biggest issue that InteriorBeat came across is that it is incredibly hard to get transparency around the environmental impact of furniture. And in fact, they found that there were very few tools to provide such insights.
Sounds about time for the large furniture makers of the world should have a tool to help them find out their products footprint right? That’s just what InteriorBeat is attempting to do! Although still in its early phases, check out the Furniture Footprint Calculator to get started. Using the Furniture Footprint Calculator will give you insights into the CO2 footprint of furniture from production to the door of the customer.
This is an exciting opportunity for the furniture industry to begin using the Furniture Footprint Calculator to gain insights and highlight potential issues to address sustainability! Moreover, just imagine design students and educators using the tool in their course work for the future of sustainability in design and manufacturing. However, my favorite aspect of the Furniture Footprint Calculator is the idea of creating and impactful environmental transparency for consumers. We all want to know that we’re helping out!
