When you are furnishing your home you are probably thinking of matching materials, colours and styles to create the atmosphere you want, but you can also give consideration to environmental and ethical factors.

The areas where careful choices can make the biggest environment differences are:

How you dress yourself and how you dress your home is probably very important to you. Here’s a few more things to think about:

Buying: when you buy clothes and furnishings, think about their sources, who made them, who takes the profit, the materials they are made from, and what you can do with them when you’ve finished with them.

Cleaning: once you’ve bought clothes or furnishings, think about how you are going to look after them, what products are you going to use to keep them clean, how much energy will you use to look after them.

What are they doing to you: many clothes and furnishings contain chemicals: from their manufacture, as raw materials, as additives or treatments.