In Search of Sustainability:How to Evaluate a Product’s Sustainability with Four Simple Questions

I love wood furniture, benches, tables and floor-boards, and don't even get me started on log cabins! There's something homey and inviting about wood, and items made of wood. Some people claim that surrounding yourself with natural materials such as wood is better for your health than surrounding yourself with synthetics. But apart from any health concerns, wood simply is my material of choice.

But is wood furniture sustainable? I not only want my home to feel comfortable and welcoming, but I also want to ensure, as much as possible, that my choices as a consumer promote sustainability and support our planet. I knew sustainability was important, though I wasn't exactly sure what it entailed. After digging around on the Internet, I came up with a simple definition.

Sustainability “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987).

Having this definition for sustainability solidified my concern. It was no longer a vague worry for the environment. Sustainability became a consideration that I owed the future. I realized that my home wouldn't, and couldn't, feel as warm and inviting if I knew that my purchasing decisions were undermining future generations, whether human, plant or animal. When it came to the choice to purchase wooden furniture, I needed to know: What were the ramifications of my decision? Where did the furniture come from? And how might its construction impact the environment?

Greenpeace's website has a page devoted to the importance of trees and forests. Most of us know that the destruction of forests erodes topsoil and endangers plants and animals. Forests are also indispensable to the hydrological cycle, regulating water-flow and rainfall.  Greenpeace reports that damage to a forest in the Amazon can negatively impact rainfall in the American midwest (Greenpeace.org). There are some startling figures on this web page that make me stop and think twice about wood furniture. Here are two such statements:

“The destruction of forests is responsible for up to a fifth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions - more than every plane, car, truck, ship and train on the planet combined.” (Greenpeace.org)

“[I]n the minute it has taken you to read this page, a forest area the size of 35 football pitches [soccer fields] has been destroyed.” (Greenpeace.org)

Clearly not all logging is sustainable in the spirit of Brundtland's definition. Logging that erodes top-soil, impacts weather-patterns and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere may be meeting the needs of today, but it is not taking the future into consideration.

In my investigations, I learned that there is more to sustainability than the impact on natural resources. We must also consider human resources. Lucy Siegel, a reporter for the UK newspaper The Guardian wrote a 2007 article asking “Is It Okay to Buy Wood Furniture?” In addition to the concerns listed above, Siegel adds another: “Illegal logging is inextricably linked to the forcible removal of indigenous communities.” Logging may not be ecologically or socially sustainable. Displacing indigenous populations compromises their ability to meet their own needs and can have long-ranging impacts on future generations. Learning these facts about the wide-ranging potential impacts of my purchasing decisions was overwhelming. I began to feel unsure of how to make choices that promote sustainability.

To overcome the hopelessness that was creeping in, I decided more research was needed. Luckily, I found Oliver Chéry and Elise Marcandella's article  “Innovation and Sustainable Development in Wood Furniture Design”. These authors investigated wood furniture production in Europe and found three main characteristics of sustainable furniture: lifecycle, treatment of people involved, and social responsibility of companies involved (Chéry, Marcandella Pp. 169) . I took these characteristics and converted them into questions that could be asked of a product: 1) Is the life-cycle of the product environmentally sustainable from start to finish? 2) Are the people involved in gathering the raw materials and producing the finished product working in a sustainable environment? In other words, are they healthy mentally and physically, and does the business promote a healthy work-life balance? And 3) Does the business try to work with other socially responsible businesses?

Breaking down the questions of sustainability into three categories gives me a way of evaluating whether or not a given furniture purchase was sustainable in a more systematic way. To these three questions, I added my own: is the product built to last? I wanted to address quality—I don't want to buy something that will have to be replaced in a few years. I also wanted to address aesthetics—is it something I want in my home in a decade? I want to avoid purchasing a style I would tire of quickly and be tempted to replace with the latest trend. While investigations into the sustainability practices of furniture companies are still incredibly complicated, these four categories (life-cycle of the produc, treatment of all people involved in product development; responsibility of businesses involved and quality and aesthetics of the product) gave me somewhere to begin.

To test my new criteria for investigating sustainability I asked furniture-maker Robin Wade the following questions about his business:

Where do your raw materials come from? And how are they transported to your shop?

Is the harvesting of wood that supplies your raw materials done in a sustainable way?

How do you help maintain sustainability for those who work with your product from the start to the end of its life-cycle? How do you encourage work-life balance, and an awareness of healthy work practices?

Is the product itself designed to be sustainable? Is it designed to last? Is it designed to maintain a classic aesthetic over time such that consumers won't feel a need to buy new furniture to meet changing styles?

Robin's answers were extremely encouraging. He told me that all of the hardwood used in his shop is local and the vast majority of it is logged within 60 miles of his studio. Therefore transportation costs are low. The wood that is used to create his beautiful pieces of furniture is not shipped halfway around the world but only 60 miles at most. The trees are not harvested using clear-cutting techniques, which risk the erosion of topsoil, but instead are often individually harvested. Farmers and residents who cut down their own trees, for one reason or another, sometimes prefer to donate the tree to Robin's shop rather than paying someone to haul the tree to the dump. Robin also sources his raw materials from local tree farmers in the area.  Robin uses many hand-tools in making his furniture, so there is less gas or electrical impact from the production process than there would be from a shop that only uses power tools. Over the product's life-cycle, from tree to furniture, I had a neat picture of a sustainable process.

In regards to whether the other businesses involved in the furniture-making process were socially responsible, Robin admits that in the past he had not studied the inner workings of each tree's owners' work habits, but he is becoming more and more aware of this issue as he moves forward. I suspect that this ignorance is true for most small-business owners and consumers in general.

In discussing a sustainable workforce, Robin demonstrated that he is conscientious in his treatment of employees and promotes work-life balance. His employees' health is of paramount importance and he reported that there has not been a single on-the-job injury during his six years in business. He never asks for overtime, and ensures that his employees have weekends off. He is the first to claim that there is more he could—and wants to—do. This awareness demonstrates that he does not take his workers for granted, but is constantly trying to improve working conditions.

Finally, it is evident from the way in which Robin Wade Furniture is made, that Robin's product is crafted to last. It will likely outlast me! In a very real sense, buying quality wooden furniture is fulfilling not only your own needs, but the needs of future generations, when the piece is  handed down among family and friends.

In my quest to purchase lasting, environmentally friendly furnishings, I developed a strategy for determining a product's sustainability. Making a sustainable choice requires thought and investigation and it also requires us as consumers to ask the producers and merchants of our products questions about the four main characteristics of sustainability. These are life cycle of the product, treatment of all the people involved in the product's development, the social responsibility of the businesses involved, and the quality and aesthetics of the product. Typically, answers cannot be found from only one individual. During its life cycle, a product might transfer hands several times, and the individual who sells the furniture may not know the entirety of the product's path from raw material to their store.

If we are serious about ensuring that our furniture is made in sustainable ways, we need to ask questions of all the people involved in the process of production, from start to finish. Perfect sustainability is an ideal we strive for, but it is also one where we might fall short. Ultimately, we may never be able to determine that a product is 100% sustainable. I have come to think of sustainability as coming in degrees.

While my four questions make the task of investigating sustainability less daunting, the process is still complicated and requires considering several factors. It is all too easy to get discouraged by the task of making sustainable choices and simply make no effort to investigate the consequences of our consumer choices. But this practice itself is not sustainable. If none of us ask questions, then nothing will improve. It's better to try to promote sustainability than to do nothing.

Doing nothing leaves a future in which nobodies needs are met.

References:

Brundtland, Gro Harlem “Our Common Future” World Commissions on Environment and Development. 1987. Print.

Chéry, Oliver and Marcandella, Elise “Innovation and Sustainable Development in Wood Furniture Design” in Management of Technology, Innovation and Value Creation: Selected Papers for the 16th International Conference on Management of Technology, Mostafa Hashem Sherif and Tarek M. Khalil (eds.) USA; World Scientific Publishing. 2008. Print.

Greenpeace “Protecting Forests” 2010. Web. Accessed March 5th 2012

Siegle, Lucy “Is it Okay to Buy Wooden Furniture” The Guardian Sunday February 18th 2007. Web. Accessed March 3rd 2012.

Wade, Robin. Personal Interview. March 4th.