With everyone concerned about the environment, being eco-friendly is just one step we can all take toward improving the world around us. Even if you are not concerned about global warming and the changes in the entire world, it benifits us all if we can keep our own little patch of the globe as friendly as possible. Eco-friendly design is no exception. There are ways for each of us to reduce how much we consume, reuse and repurpose materials, and recycle things that are old into new things again.
Shopping at flea markets is one fun way to be earth conscious. What does not get sold at flea markets and yard sales will often end up in landfills. This is a great alternative to buying new furniture then spending hours to give it an antique look with the use of sandpaper and chemicals. This kind of shopping is great for English colonial styles as well as for that pseudo French cottage you have been working on.
Another way to decorate and be friendly to mother earth is the use of natural, renewable materials in your home. Building your table from recycled wood instead of new, braiding a rug from natural dried grasses in an oriental living room, and using plant based chemicals instead of synthetic are all little steps we can take. One fun thing I saw was a woman who reclaimed some old wallpaper books and used the sheets inside to give the wall in her guest room a quilted look by pasting the sheets onto the wall. After adding an oak bed that had been painted white that she got at a flea market and some mismatched white washed wood furniture to the room and draping the bed with hand me down quilts, she had created a charming space for her guests. Home theater furniture is a great place to use old wood to offset the high tech look of the home theater.
There are more ways to use organic and earth friendly materials in your home decor.
Kapok curtains are a great way to be eco-friendly. Kapok is a tree in the rainforest that sheds fibrous seeds. The seeds are harvested by a local tribe. When you pull apart a Kapok seed, it is down like inside. Because the tree is never touched or harmed, this is a fully sustainable fabric type.
Hemp is another strong organic material used to make rope, fabric, and a hundred other things. Depending on how it is conditioned, hemp can have a variety of textures and hemp plants do very little harm to the land they are planted on.
Some people are really getting into the recycling trend. One company makes pillow inserts from finely shredded plastic soda bottles. The inserts are soft and hypo-allergenic. What is surprising is that these pillows have a down like feel to them.
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