Let's go eco!

When you’re in training to be a designer, part of the journey involves discovering your style, what areas of the industry you eventually want to go into etc.

Now the first year of my studies have come to an end, I have found myself becoming increasingly interested in the world of eco design.

Eco has come a long way since the days of the hippies and hemp rugs!

There are now so many ecologically sound designs available, there’s no reason not to indulge and help save the planet at the same time. But it’s not just about the products we buy, it’s a way of life.

Britain first and foremost eco-designer is Oliver Heath. Heath believes that ‘We can’t all hope to live in shiny new wind turbine powered eco houses but there is much that we can do in our homes, lives and working environments that can make a real difference.’

In his latest book release Urban Eco Chic, Heath breaks down eco design into the three basic elements of Technology, Nature and Vintage.

Technology

There are two ways you can look at this area.

1. Don’t buy any new technology, therefore saving the energy and materials produced whilst manufacturing new TVs, washings machines etc, or*

2. Buy the latest in efficient technology. This will not only help save money on your energy bills, it is likely to have been produced from renewable or managed materials.*

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world or material world. It a product comes from nature, it is more likely to come from a renewable source and therefore ecologically sound. What you have to watch out for is the amount of energy used to produce the product, as this may counteract eco-friendliness of the natural material and therefore pointless!

Vintage

This is undoubtedly my favourite area of the three! I spent a great of my childhood scouring charity shops for a variety of things (albeit slightly against my will, as I thought they all smelt of mothballs) but the older I have become, the more likely I am to look for homeware rather than piles of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books! Looking for vintage (or basically secondhand) goods is undoubtedly the best way to obtain the ‘eco chic’ style and way of life. The only energy used is your own (or maybe a little bit of petrol if the item is too heavy) and you can feel smug about the fact that the item was a bargain too!

Under the area of vintage also comes customisation. Regular readers will be familiar with my dodgy old pine sideboard that I’ve been trying to get rid of for the best part of 3 years. It’s lovely in the fact that it’s solid wood, but I do harbour and unnatural dislike of all things pine. So, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that instead of flogging it on eBay, I’m going it paint it instead!

Fingers crossed it will go as well as the painting of the fireplace (well done hubby). All I need to do now is to magic up some money for a new carpet and then I can rest…

Speaking of carpet and in the spirit of all things eco, I have been seriously investigating natural carpet. It’s becoming so popular, even Next have started supplying it. The best selection of natural flooring though, would be from the Alternative Flooring Company. They’ve got Coir, Jute, Seagrass, Sisal…Anyway, I’ve ordered a bunch of samples to test on the hubby and will share the results soon. I have to try these things on him first, as like all men, gets a little scared of things he doesn’t know, like natural materials, colour, massages etc but ends up loving them eventually.

Enough of me waffling on, I must get on with my textiles notebook for college!

*Please bear in mind, these descriptions barely touch the surface, so check out Urban Eco Chic for more info. By the way, this is an Amazon affiliate link, so if you click and buy, I may get a few pence towards the new carpet…

This entry was posted on 02/08/2009 at 02:16 pm and is filed under Tips, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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