According to Reclaim Home’s owner, Bridget Bradley, “Our goal is to find products that you instantly fall in love with because of their style, comfort, and usability. The fact that they are also eco-friendly will be an added bonus.

Some of the items in our store are made of recycled materials, others are certified organic, and others are made with sustainable materials that won’t offgas dangerous chemicals in your home. While it is not possible in every case, we give preference to products made in California to help reduce carbon emissions resulting from shipping materials over long distances.”

Reclaim Home will be exhibiting their wares at the Green Festival in San Francisco on November 13-25 at the San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center. Go see their Organic Mattresses by Savvy Rest and Sustainable Beds by Urban Woods.

Living Green Pavilion

The Living Green Pavilion is a perfect environment for furniture manufacturers to showcase their new lines of sustainably made designs.

Since it’s inception, The Living Green Pavilion has been one of the more popular destinations at Las Vegas Market.  This year, it continues to grow as the home furnishings industry’s largest space dedicated exclusively to ec0-friendly products.

At this market, the Sustainable Furnishings Council (SFC), will present a series of seminars dedicated to educating retailer and manufacturers about sustainability.  The Brave New World Environmental Leadership Series offers the most comprehensive lineup of any market on sustainability education and events.  There are nine events.  Eight are free.  And you’ll find that all seminars take place conveniently in WMC Building B, 2nd Floor Living Green Pavilion.  

Urban Woods is located in WMC Building B, 2nd Floor Living Green Pavilion, B-200

What do you get when you cross a Wilcox with a Trousdale?   a Wildale!

A perfect blend of rustic and refined reclaimed wood blended together to create a unique new collection. 

The creative minds at Rum Runner Home came up with the Hybrid furniture design this summer and feature many combinations on their floor in the Hamptons.

The newest Urban Woods, eco friendly, hybrid collection has also just arrived at SC-41 in Soquel, CA.

www.rumrunnerhome.com

www.sc41.com

More and more designers and retailers are choosing to make their custom furniture from reclaimed wood with the eco-friendly manufacturing processes available from Urban Woods.
Retailers and designer agree that the peace of mind and quick turn around time of our sustainable, domestic production beats their former sources over seas. Americans are starting to request “made in the USA” again for their household purchases and the fact that they can get exactly the dimensions and finishes they need in a relatively quick time period is a big selling point.
All pieces at Urban Woods are made of reclaimed wood and finished with water based stains and low VOC finishes.
Get what you need at www.urbanwoods.net

reclaimed wood furniture

Reclaimed Douglas Fir at Urban Woods

The term “reclaimed wood” may conjur many different images. Some might imagine sunken logs that have been rescued from Amazonian river bottoms, or old barn siding from a dilapidated Southern plantation, or a peasants home razed in the third world because the value of the ancient timber is more vauable than the shelter it provides. All of these woods are reclaimed by some one, some where for some purpose and by some different method.

When it comes to sustainability and the making of sustainable furnishings one must consider the degree of sustainability of the ingredients. Is it constructed from FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) wood (the FSC promotes responsible management of the worlds forests), Bamboo (actually a rapidly growing grass) or the most sustainable of materials, Reclaimed Wood from local sources?

Urban Woods is always striving to create a more sustainable product. In fact our products are beyond sustainable. By eliminating waste wood from landfills where they are left to decompose and release carbon into the atmosphere, reclaimed wood is “rescued” and repurposed for a second life.

See the full range of furniture made in Los Angeles from reclaimed wood and inquire about custom furniture options made by Urban Woods.

Kirei Board inlaid in Palisades dining table.

Kirei Board is a beautiful, sustainable creation manufactured from reclaimed agricultural fiber from the Sorghum plant grown around the world for food. The stalks of this plant are usually burned or thrown into landfills after harvest. The stalks left over after harvest are heat-pressed with a non-toxic adhesive to form lightweight, strong, unique Kirei Board. By using them in the production of Kirei Board this material is removed from the waste stream, reducing landfill need and air pollution, while giving rural farmers a new source of revenue from a previously unused waste material.

Kirei Board is used throughout the Urban Woods furniture collections and utilized in many custom applications by Urban Woods. The Trousdale Collection features Kirei Board accents and panels together with reclaimed Douglas Fir creating a perfect blend of sustainable materials.

Check out the “friends” link on our home page to see Kirei Board used in unique ways.

www.migandtig.com

Ben & Jerry’s has teamed up with Greenpeace to unveil an environmentally-friendly freezer being called, “The Prius of Refrigeration.”

The freezer, which will eliminate dangerous F-gas emissions found in standard freezers, runs on about three cigarette lighters’ worth of propane.

Greenpeace is hoping their initiative, called “Greenfreeze,” will catch on in the U.S.A. as it has in Europe. 

Today, Greenfreeze technology is in use in more than 300 million refrigerators worldwide, but it was not allowed into the United States until earlier this year when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorized Ben & Jerry’s to run a test trial of units equipped with Greenfreeze technology.

The impact the project expects to have will be equivalent to taking 850,000 Hummer H3 SUVs off the road.

Greenpeace engineers developed a new climate-safe refrigeration technology known as Greenfreeze in 1992 and gave it away to any company that wanted it.

The technology was developed by two scientists, Professor Harry Rosin and Dr. Hans Preisendanz from the Institute of Hygiene in Dortmund, Germany, who were looking for a refrigerant which neither destroyed the ozone layer nor contributed to global warming. They settled on a mix of the hydrocarbons propane and butane.

“The beauty of Greenfreeze,” Dr. Preisendanz told the UNEP magazine “Our Planet,” back in 1996, “is that anyone can have the technology. It cannot be patented because all we have done is find the right mix of two existing common gases. The technology is totally free and can be used by the whole world, whether rich or poor, for a whole range of uses.”

“The irony is that the chemical industry also searched for a substitute for CFCs but only in one direction – to find substances they could patent.” he said.

Ben & Jerry’s acquired the freezers as part of a two-year EPA-approved trial program of the “Greenfreeze” technology.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presents the LEED Gold Award to Chen Zhili, head of the Beijing Olympic Village. (Photo courtesy BOGOC)

The Beijing Olympic Village received a LEED gold award from the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certifies that buildings have met a set of criteria for sustainability and energy efficiency.The LEED gold award was presented to Chen Zhili, head of the Beijing Olympic Village, on Wednesday by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Chen said the presentation affirmed the cooperation between China and the United States in clean energy technology for Olympic Games.

More than 16,800 athletes, coaches and officials of national teams are living in the residential section of the village – in 22 six-story buildings and 20 nine-story buildings that were constructed using environmentally-friendly paint and other materials.

The Beijing Olympic Village uses solar cells and geothermal heat pumps to supply energy to the buildings. The buildings feature solar heat, solar hot water, solar thermoelectric cogeneration, and intelligent control devices. They consume just 1/30th of the energy consumed by conventional buildings, according to the contractor, Guoao Investment Company.

Through a heat exchange system, the Village is projected to draw 7.89 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy from the Sun during the Olympics and slightly less in the years after the Games are finished and the buildings are used to house other residents.

The system taps energy from Qinghe sewage treatment plant and upgrades it through heat pump devices for winter heating and summer cooling. The technology can save energy by over 40 percent compared with ordinary air-conditioning systems.

In the Village, solar energy collecting tubes have been installed on rooftop gardens. The system can meet hot water demands of 16,000 users during the Games and some 2, 000 households after the Games. The project can save 5 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year,

The wastewater in the Village is being recycled and the 200 tons of water recycled daily is used for landscape watering in the Village.