Happy Earth Day everyone! OK, OK, maybe you have a slightly nagging feeling about this. It’s one of those events that feels like a reminder, like maybe you’re not eating enough healthy food or exercising enough. “Am I really doing all I can to help the planet?” Probably not, right?
We could all probably consume less, drive less, remember to turn out the lights more often, use less water, pick less toxic products from less far away, and the list goes on and on. And then we feel a little guilty about it. And we think about how insurmountably huge the Earth’s problems are. And then we think about how ineffective we are, and it’s all hopeless. Earth Day, how depressing, I don’t want to think about it! And yet…
And yet… every little bit really does help. Look at your good side: Maybe you already recycle, maybe you eat organic, maybe you traded your SUV for a Prius, maybe you do take shorter showers. It’s all good! And it’s all cumulative. Enough of us taking these baby steps results in real movement. You probably already have more insulation, better fuel economy and a smaller carbon footprint than your parents did.
Where we live, Styrofoam food containers are already banned, if we don’t bring our own grocery bags to the store we have to pay for them, and our building codes are about to change again, requiring ever more energy efficiency. While this may all seem inconvenient, it’s also progress. At Fringe Studio we deal with a couple of larger-scale issues: Did you know that our buildings contribute far more to climate change than our cars? Every project we do improves energy efficiency somewhere. We wish we all could be less wasteful about furniture, too. Most of it has been shipped around the world, contains chemicals we don’t want to think about, and will be thrown out after a few years, where it will contribute to landfill volume for many years.
As members of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, we are committed to doing things more conscientiously. The fiberboard is formaldehyde-free, the finishes are low-VOC water-based, the sourcing is local. The wood slabs you see on our site? All salvaged. We can even tell you where some of the trees fell down. Some of it was retrieved from burn piles! Imagine: you could buy something made from someone else’s trash, that you would keep for a long time, and that is really beautiful. That would feel good, wouldn’t it?
Want to feel even better? Just click on the images below, and you will become a highly educated consumer, just like that.
We could all probably consume less, drive less, remember to turn out the lights more often, use less water, pick less toxic products from less far away, and the list goes on and on. And then we feel a little guilty about it. And we think about how insurmountably huge the Earth’s problems are. And then we think about how ineffective we are, and it’s all hopeless. Earth Day, how depressing, I don’t want to think about it! And yet…
And yet… every little bit really does help. Look at your good side: Maybe you already recycle, maybe you eat organic, maybe you traded your SUV for a Prius, maybe you do take shorter showers. It’s all good! And it’s all cumulative. Enough of us taking these baby steps results in real movement. You probably already have more insulation, better fuel economy and a smaller carbon footprint than your parents did.
Where we live, Styrofoam food containers are already banned, if we don’t bring our own grocery bags to the store we have to pay for them, and our building codes are about to change again, requiring ever more energy efficiency. While this may all seem inconvenient, it’s also progress. At Fringe Studio we deal with a couple of larger-scale issues: Did you know that our buildings contribute far more to climate change than our cars? Every project we do improves energy efficiency somewhere. We wish we all could be less wasteful about furniture, too. Most of it has been shipped around the world, contains chemicals we don’t want to think about, and will be thrown out after a few years, where it will contribute to landfill volume for many years.
As members of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, we are committed to doing things more conscientiously. The fiberboard is formaldehyde-free, the finishes are low-VOC water-based, the sourcing is local. The wood slabs you see on our site? All salvaged. We can even tell you where some of the trees fell down. Some of it was retrieved from burn piles! Imagine: you could buy something made from someone else’s trash, that you would keep for a long time, and that is really beautiful. That would feel good, wouldn’t it?
Want to feel even better? Just click on the images below, and you will become a highly educated consumer, just like that.
Now pat yourself on the back! We can make a difference. Happy Earth Day!
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