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:

Every year, a huge area of rain forest is cut down to produce timber, build roads and provide agricultural land, and is not replaced. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that using timber in buildings is BAD, in fact so long as you follow some basic principles WOOD IS GOOD.

Think about it:

Much modern furniture is made from bonded wood, rather than solid wood.

Products such as bonded wood, laminates, MDF, OSB, woodchip, hardboard and softboard are also very practical for flooring over an existing solid or boarded floor. Some of these forms use formaldehyde resins to bind them, which are carcinogenic.

We have all had significant exposure to BFRs, brominated flame retardants, which are used to treat electronic equipment (including computers), foam furnishings, curtains, chair covers, and clothes as a result of legislation passed some 20 years ago.

BFRs are long-lasting chemicals which are suspected to have hormonal and developmental effects on the body. Long term effects are not known, but some products have already been banned. Some BFRs are known to be extremely dangerous in aquatic environments.

Wallpapers can be sources of VOCs.

Choose wallpapers made from water-based paints to minimise harmful solvents. They should be bound using natural resins, and made from paper from an FSC certified sustainable source. Currently it is very difficult (and expensive) to find environmentally friendly wallpaper, so you could as an alternative consider buying wallcoverings made from hemp, arrowroot, bamboo or wildgrass, which are readily available. They tend to be more expensive, but longer lasting.

Although you might think that vacuum cleaner manufacturers deliberately promote scare stories about dirt and dust in your home in order to get you to buy their latest product, in fact there can be all sorts of nasties hidden in your carpet fibres.