Vermont Woods Studios - Eco Furniture Blog

Green Furniture, Candlelight Dinners and Earth Hour

Congratulations to our Vermont Woods Studios customers and readers who celebrated Earth hour with a candlelight dinner, a cribbage game or a relaxing chat by the fireside.  You joined hundreds of millions of environmental activists around the globe who made this annual climate change awareness event a phenomenal success.  

Here are some cool pictures on the Earth Hour sponsor's (World Wildlife Fund) website that show lights out from Sydney to Bejing to New York City.   You can upload and share your own photos, films, blog entries and more.  

We'd love to see your photos too.  Send us pictures of you enjoying a candlelight dinner seated at your  Vermont Woods Studios eco-friendly table and chairs and we'll send you a $25 gift certificate!

You Can Help Save Madagascar's Rainforest

Madagascar is the world's fourth largest island, situated off the southeast coast of Africa.  It's home to 17.5 million people and many of the worlds most endangered species--the vast majority of which are found nowhere else on earth.  We've been supporting efforts to save the rainforest in Madagascar  for many years, through the work of World Wildlife Fund, WWF and Conservation International.

I was sad to read in the New York Times today, that political turmoil in Madagascar has led to lawlessness and a situation where the country's last remaining rainforests are being logged by armed gangs of profiteers, clearing rosewood, ebony and other valuable tropical hardwoods.

 
Marojejy National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Madesgar's most strikingly beautiful wild area was closed this month as conditions were too dangerous for park rangers to work in.

Along with the destruction of rainforest lands, may be the disappearance of some of the world's most endangered primates, like the ring tailed lemur and the Silky Sifaka lemur.

As woodworkers, part of our job is to educate consumers about the need to avoid use of rainforest woods, particularly the rosewood and ebony that are coming from endangered areas like Madagascar.  If you or someone you know is purchasing wood flooring, furniture or accessories, please encourage them to use sustainably harvested woods originating in the USA.

You might also like to visit Ryan Wilson's Save the Madagascar Rain Forest petition site today and add your signature urging the Madagascar government to cooperate with international effforts to save the rainforest.  Or adopt a lemur from the WWF.  Without our help, scientists estimate that the forest will be depleted in less than 20 years.  You can help prevent that!  Thanks!

Forest Conservation and Junk Mail Quiz

Have you signed the petition calling for a national Do Not Mail Registry to stop the tidal wave of junk mail clogging up our mailboxes?  If you haven't done this yet, maybe you'll do so after taking this short quiz.

The junk mail industry claims ___  trees a year.

1. 1 Million
2. 10 Million
3. 100 Million
   

Deforestation contributes more to global warming annually than all the _____ in the world.

1. Cars
   
2. Planes
3. Trains
4. Cars + Planes + Trains

Junk mail accounts for ___ percent of USPS mail.

1. 10 %
   
2. 20%
3. 30%
4. 75%
   

Answers:  100 Million,   Cars + Planes + Trains   and   30%

Surveys show that almost 90% of Americans favor the Do Not Mail Registry.  Please join us at Vermont Woods Studios in asking Congress to make it happen, and forward this post to your friends.  Ask them to join us too.  Please use the comments section to let us know if you have signed the petition and we'll keep track of the issue for you.  Thanks!

Green Furniture, Climate Change and Earth Hour

We're asking all of our Vermont Woods Studios customers, vendors and friends to join us this Saturday, March 28 at 8:30pm in turning out the lights for the Third Annual International Earth Hour.

Earth Hour is World Wildlife Fund's global initiative where individuals, businesses and governments turn off their lights for one hour to show their support for action on climate change.  Major cities across the US and around the world have committed to participate in Earth Hour 2009.  

Last year,  all seven continents turned out their lights in the largest climate event of all time.  The movement captured the public's imagination with lights going out at some of the world's most iconic landmarks including:

• The Sydney Opera House
• Bangkok's Wat Arun Buddhist temple
• The Coliseum in Rome
• Stockholm's Royal Castle
• New York's Empire State Building
• Sears Tower in Chicago and the
• Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

Even Google's homepage went dark.

What does Climate Change have to do with Green Furniture and why are we so fired up about this initiative?  

Believe it or not, 20% of global climate change is caused by deforestation.  As woodworkers, we've been reaching out to educate others about the need to preserve the forests.  Not just the temperate forests in which we live and work, but particularly, the world's rapidly disappearing tropical rainforests.  

We all depend on the forests for our survival.  They are the lungs of our planet and house many of our most precious natural resources and endangered species.  Forest preservation is our passion and Earth Hour is a way to symbolize that passion.  We hope you'll join us!

Forest Conservation and Junk Mail

Forest conservation is a big part of our mission at Vermont Woods Studios.  All of our furniture is made from sustainably harvested wood and we donate a portion of the proceeds of each sale to non-profit groups working to preserve the forest.  

So when I read a recent article in Audubon Magazine (by T. Edward nickens) about the damage that's happening to our forests as a result of junk mail production, I felt we should get on board and do something to help.  Would you believe that:

• Over 100 Billion pieces of junk mail are delivered to Americans each year (>800 pieces per household, almost half of which goes directly to the landfill without even being opened)

• It takes over 100 million trees to produce this junk mail (that's equivalent to clear-cutting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every 4 months)

• The manufacture of this junk mail releases more greenhouse gas emissions per year than the emissions released by 9.4 million average passenger cars

  
  

The Canadian Boreal forest (home to caribou, grizzly bears, wolves and 40% of North America's waterfowl) and Indonesia's tropical rainforests (home to numerous critically endangered species including orangutans and tigers) are particularly at risk from junk mail producers, harvesting wood in these areas.   

Want to help solve the junk mail problem?  The non-profit group, Forest Ethics has an online petition you can sign, asking Congress for a Do Not Mail registry, similar to the Do Not Call registry.  That would be great, wouldn't it?  

In the meantime, here is a fantastic website where you can quickly and easily eliminate most of your junk mail, right now...it's Catalog Choice.  

Just sign up and select the catalogs you don't want to receive.  Voila!  Your name is off their lists.  Take action right NOW and help save the earth's forests.  You'll be protecting endangered species and indigenous peoples AND helping to stem global climate change.  You're going to feel really good about yourself today!

Furniture Expert, Abbas Singles Out Vermont Woods Studios Custom Green Furniture

Many thanks to Abe Abbas, resident furniture expert at About.com for his informative article on Customized, Hand Crafted Furniture from Vermont Woods Studios. Abe is one of the foremost furniture authorities on the web. He's responsible for ingniting and maintaining the enthusiasm of a large crowd of interior design and furniture aficionados who meet, greet and discuss the latest on his blog, forum, newsletter and website.

On St. Patrick's Day, Abe published an article highlighting our green mission at Vermont Woods Studios and showcasing many of our handmade, custom and customized furniture pieces, including the:

• Handmade Cherry Moon Bed
• American Shaker Round Wood Table
• Vermont Country Cottage Furniture Collection

He provides a picture gallery of his favorite handmade furniture pieces from our collection. Check it out!

Celebrating St Patrick's Day With Green Furniture

What do Irish stew, a corned beef and cabbage dinner, and a couple mugs of Guinness have in common?  They all taste better when served on a natural, eco-friendly, green dining table made by Vermont Woods Studios.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

VermontWoodsStudios.com - What's In A Name?

Do you think three words is too long for a company name?  When we first went into business and chose a name, we wanted to be descriptive about it.  Since we represent a number of small handmade furniture studios scattered throughout the woods of the great Green Mountain state, we chose Vermont Woods Studios. 

Well, over time people began to shorten our name to Vermont Woods and we even incorporated that into our online presence.  Oops.  Bad idea.  Out Internet gurus, Tina at EtegritySEO.com and Barb at Irislines.com have (thankfully) put an abrupt end to that.  It turns out that having two URLs, www.VermontWoodsStudios.com and www.VermontWoods.com was making it more difficult, instead of easier for our customers to find us.  I guess Google and other search engines don't like multiple URLs that go to the same website, so we were not coming up like we should have, in Internet searches. 

Anyway, the reason for this post is to let you know that our one and only website address is:  www.VermontWoodsStudios.com.  And all of our email addresses now end with @VermontWoodsStudios.com.  The old VermontWoods.com urls no longer work.  Onward and upward!

Gmail, Amail...Where's My Email?

What's going on with Email these days?  We've been experiencing some very weird inconsistencies that we're working hard on figuring out and fixing.  From what I've gathered so far, it has to do with certain servers along the pathway from sender to receiver, being down or compromised in some way.  It seems that about 1-2% of our emails are not reaching our customers and about 1-2% of their emails are not reaching us.  The worst aspect is that we are not receiving error messages to alert us of these incidences, so we have no way of knowing when they are occurring.  We're working with our service provider and Google's brilliant Gmail experts, hoping to have this problem corrected as soon as possible, but it seems mostly out of our control.  We're asking customers to give us a call (888-390-5571) if you send an email to us and don't receive a reply within 24 hours (or within 1 hour if you email during office hours of 9AM-3PM, M-F).  Similarly, if you're expecting a response from us and don't receive it promptly--give us a call.  Thanks!

Customizing a Luxury Rocking Chair

There are luxury rocking chairs and then there are Ultra Luxury Rocking Chairs, custom hand-crafted and sculpted by Vermont Woods Studios master Craftsman, Kit Clark to form fit to your exact body shape, size and movement. 

Kit has spent a lifetime skillfully crafting custom furniture for individuals and families.  His latest creation, this Custom Rocking Chair, truly does take custom furniture to a new level.  Come sit in one of his floor models and Kit will measure and fit you to a personalized rocking chair with the exacting precision that a  tailor uses to measure for designer suit.

“I do this because I love working with wood.  Let me share this passion with you by offering you an alternative to ordinary furniture design and quality.  You will have the pride and knowledge that any piece I build for you is of the highest quality and beauty.  And each piece is guaranteed for a lifetime.”

 

"I love my new rocker, Kit!  It's not only a work of art, it fits me like a glove.  I plan to spend many an evening rocking my new grandson to sleep in it!  Thank you so much."           Carol C.

Green Furniture: How the Sustainable Furniture Council Evaluates Integrity

Have you noticed that just about every furniture company out there is selling eco-friendly furniture these days?   I just googled green furniture and got over 42 million results.  And yet we know that over 50% of our wood furniture in the US is imported  (Chinese imports increased over 525% over the last 10 years - ref).  Do you think those imports are eco-friendly?  Not likely.  We've written many times about the illegal and unethical practices that make these cheap imports possible.  

So how can one get an honest, third party evaluation of a so-called eco-friendly furniture company to determine the integrity of their claims?  Try doing some research on the Sustainable Furniture Council Website.  The SFC describes itself as "a non-profit balanced coalition of industry players created to promote sustainable practices among manufacturers, retailers, and consumers alike with a public tagging program to identify good choices."  Their slogan is "The Solution Starts with You!"

The SFC has over 250 members and each furniture company in the Council is listed on the SFC website.  To be considered for membership, a furniture company must complete a detailed application questionnaire that surveys the company's performance in everything from the extent of reclaimed and recycled resources employed, to the use of electronic versus paper documentation to the treatment and wages of workers.  Strict criteria are required for acceptance into the SFC and each member's answers to the application questionnaire are posted online to promote transparency.  You can find the Vermont Woods Studios application to the SFC here.

We applaud those consumers who take the time to research their furniture purchases at the Sustainable Furniture Council Website. You are a part of the solution to global warming and preservation of the earth's forests... and the endangered animals and peoples who inhabit those forests.  Thanks!