John Stein is into demolitions, but not in the way one might think.  The founder and president of California-based Kirei USA has a knack for finding the possibilities inherent in the unwanted.

This vision shows clearly in every Kirei product, including the newest line, Windfall.  These engineered panels are produced in partnership with Windfall Lumber, which takes Douglas & Hemlock Fir from deconstructed buildings in the Pacific Northwest and brings the reclaimed wood to fresh, new life.

“It’s great to reuse demolition material that would otherwise take up space in the landfill,” says Mr. Stein.  “Having it become beautiful wood panels is even better.  This is old-growth wood that just can’t be found any more, and we get to bring it to designers.”

Windfall is manufactured in the United States using low-VOC adhesives.  The reclaimed wood is milled into strips of differing width, which are then randomly stacked to form the panels and cut to size.  Panels are available either solid or 3-ply with a NUAF/FSC-certified core.  They may come unfinished, with a clear coat that shows off the natural grain, or stained and prefinished in Anthracite, Mocha, Ivory, and Leather colors.  The result adds to any interior.

And as Windfall gives stylish new life to reclaimed wood, so the other Kirei lines bring new purpose to certain types of agricultural waste.  Kirei Board, Kirei Coco Tiles, and Kirei Wheatboard use reclaimed agricultural fiber from plants commonly grown for food around the world.

After harvest, waste from sorghum (an edible grass), coconut, and wheat plants is usually thrown into landfills or burned.  Now much of this unused material is removed from the waste stream, reducing landfill use and air pollution while giving rural farmers a new source of revenue.  Rapidly renewable or FSC-certified wood are used as bonding strips, greatly reducing the need for newly harvested wood for building.

Manufacture can be more involved than with particle board.  For example, with Kirei Board the sorghum stalks are compressed, washed, and woven into sheets.  The latter are then stacked and heat-pressed with a formaldehyde-free adhesive to create blocks, which are cut to desired size.

Kirei offers a similar product made of Moso bamboo.  The plantations from which this fiber is taken are generally reclaimed farmland, which helps to preserve uncut habitat.  Panels are available in a wide variety of colorways, including the luscious looking new Chocolate, probably the favorite out of all the bamboo treatments that I’ve yet seen.

These four products are suitable for architectural millwork, cabinetry, flooring (though not in high traffic areas), wall displays or covering, furniture, and decorative objects – in short, any application where one would normally think of using wood.

To round out this versatility Kirei came out with their Canamo Hemp Panels.  These are made with a no-added-formaldehyde resin and reclaimed hemp hurd fiber left over from fabric & seed oil manufacture: over 70% post-industrial recycled content.  The panels are produced in 48”x96” size and are offered in a variety of thicknesses, all left unfinished so that designers may best tailor the product to individual need.  According to Kirei, the hemp panels may be used for the purposes above.  Ceiling panels are also available.

Collectively, the Kirei philosophy may yield several LEED credits for one’s project, which in itself is wonderful, but there’s much more to it that that.

The word kirei is a Japanese adjective signifying many meanings, including Clean, Pure, Beautiful, and Truthful.  Under John Stein’s direction the company strives to embody its namesake as an ideal.  His business aims to stimulate the economic activity of its source regions by providing new jobs at fair market wages.  By using recycled products and efficient, sustainable practices, Kirei works to lessen humanity’s impact on natural resources while contributing to clean, healthy, and aesthetically pleasing indoor environments… with a eye to the latter quality.

“Green has to be beautiful,” says Mr. Stein.

“If you’re going to do green for green’s sake you’re going to have a very limited market – people who have health issues or people with a conscience.  If you have beautiful materials that happen to be green, then really they’re open to everybody.  I regard it almost as a gateway drug to other green activities.”

With the visual appeal of the Kirei product, perhaps we’ll see many new converts to the sustainable ethic.  Let’s hope so.

~ Emerald

Images courtesy of Kirei USA.

I love tile.

I LOVE this.

Created by Everitt and Schilling of reclaimed wood from barns or building scrap, these tiles are both beautiful and functional.

Wood can lend such warmth and texture to a wall – even when it is just a small section.

Of course, you can go for the whole enchilada too!

Focusing on the DIY contingent, Everitt & Schilling sells by the square foot through their Etsy store.  Might be fun to order a couple of square feet to play with…

Thanks for visiting!

Rachel

With their line of wallcoverings, Weitzner Limited neatly puts all that nonsense to rest.

Although certainly luxurious in the sense of being well-crafted, Weitzner’s creations are also, by turns, whimsical, arresting, soothing, classical, or all of these at once.

“We like to challenge our client’s perception of what a wallcovering can be by creating innovative materials that evoke curiosity, calm and beauty,” touts the company website.  “Then we add environmental consciousness and performance (class A ratings) into the mix.”

On offer are more than a hundred wallcoverings that contribute to LEED points.  Many of the styles contain recycled pulp or rapidly renewable materials (derived from plants that are harvested on a ten-year or shorter cycle).

A star among these styles is Newsworthy, which is 100% recycled and recyclable.  Newsprint strips are hand-woven on a loom and then paperbacked to make the product wall-ready.  As an unexpected alternative to traditional grasscloth Newsworthy has many charms, among them true variability – the weave teases the senses and, on close examination, the brain, for all the thousands of tiny textual snippets beg to tell their stories.

Movie lovers will enjoy Cinema Posters, a similar product woven from reclaimed movie posters.

My personal favorites are Currents, which looks stunning framed between glass, and Eden, with which a designer could achieve some pleasing effects with light and shadow.

Special care must be taken while cutting all these products – Weitzner recommends using a new, clean blade for each cut – and several require dry cleaning. The website contains specifics on each design.  It also features a specialized clickable search engine to help designers find the exact look they need.

~ Emerald

There are modular homes and modular walls and modular floors…  but have you seen a modular plant?  No?  I hadn’t either.

But the clever folks at DIRTT Environmental Solutions looked into their imaginations and saw a vertical garden: rows and ranks of pretty, VOC-absorbing plants marching up any given wall.  Then Sustainable Industries looked at Breathe and named it one of the Top Ten Building Products of 2011.

So what is this thing?

Its parent company calls Breathe a “simple system for incorporating plants into DIRTT walls… to bring nature indoors and beautify and detoxify interior spaces.”  From a home-owner’s perspective, the modular planter looks like a splendid kitchen herb garden… or a sunroom fixture… or an arresting floral display in a well-lit entranceway.  If mounted to the wall about four to six feet upward, it could be a boon for pet owners wishing to keep their house plants safe from marauding cats or dogs.

In addition to easy installment on DIRTT modular units the “living wall” can be mounted to any pre-existing flat, vertical building surface: a desirable treatment for dull, bare concrete or brick walls with nothing cheerful to say otherwise.  Designers could content themselves with the simple statement of a single row of plants or potentially convert an entire wall into a soothing, visually delightful space.

Imagine banks of fragrant herbs or a living patchwork of flowers gracing the walls of a previously bare courtyard or boring employee break room.  Wouldn’t that help company morale?

Imagine a relief of green writ large upon the so-often-uninspiring walls of academic institutions.  A green school: lovely!  Look at the pretties!

There’s a lot of potential for this product just waiting to be tapped.  Take a moment to come see and find out more.

~ Emerald

Go to the local – or chain – hardware store and take a stroll to the paint section, where rows upon rows and literally thousands of color choices may await customers. What’s in that paint?  In many cases, that information can be more than difficult to unearth.

In the vast majority of cases the base material is latex, supplemented by a witch’s brew of chemicals to achieve consistency, color, and so forth, produced with petro-chemical or synthetic ingredients.  The result, whatever the formula, is often toxic.  Who wants that?

Florian Speier and Jessica Pfohl are among those looking for something more.  Out of frustration at the “greenwashing and lack of ingredient transparency in the paint industry,” the husband and wife team founded Unearthed Paints with the determination to help change the industry.

“We believe that consumers have a right to know what ingredients are in their paints,” proclaims the company website.  “We proudly list all the ingredients in our paint on the front of every label.  We hope that other paint manufacturers will follow our lead so that consumers can make informed decisions about the paints they bring into their homes.”

So, what’s in their paint?  Unearthed carries natural paint, meaning paint made with ingredients such as earth & mineral pigments, marble, clay, and chalk.  The medium  comes to the consumer accompanied by a full ingredient disclosure.  It is truly 100% VOC-free and biodegradable.

While clay and mineral paints have never gone out of popularity in Europe and Japan, here in America such natural finishes have been largely forgotten.  Florian and Jessica hope to change that.

After months of relationship-building with the German company Kreidezeit, arrangements were made earlier this year to begin importing the latter’s natural finishes to the U.S., where the product was rebranded for American consumers.  Unearthed Paints was born.  Now its creators are in the building process, attracting vendors and the attention of the press, with the aim of winning some market share away from an industry dominated by latex paint.

There are six types of paint offered by the company.  Four are sold as dry powder, to be mixed on site: clay paint and its thicker variation, clay roll-on plaster, Vega Paint (a vegan update on traditional milk paint recipes), and plant glue paint.  Pit lime paint and Gecko Paint are sold as liquid bases.

Similar care is taken for remainder of the product line.  On offer are three types of plaster in various textures, two natural wood finishes, along with primers, thinners, and a selection of pigment used to infuse color.

The goal of sustainability is carried into every aspect of the business, even unto consideration for energy use.  While many of the ingredients in conventional latex paints – such as petroleum products and titanium dioxide – require an energy-intensive process to produce, natural paints, in contrast, are minimally processed and made with ingredients which are abundantly available (clay, chalk) or recycled (reclaimed Italian marble).  To complement to this sourcing, Unearthed’s paint is manufactured in a carbon-neutral facility and shipped via carbon-offset transport.

The founders of Unearthed also translate their philosophy into action through their Rainforest Pledge: a program currently dedicated to helping preserve the rainforest in Paraguay.  For every square foot of Unearthed paints, plasters, or wood finishes purchased by a customer, the company will purchase one square foot of rain forest and donate it back to the Enxet and Ayoreo tribes, which are indigenous to the region.

Details of the pledge can be found at the Unearthed Paints’ website.  Once there, wander around a bit and learn about this inspiring company, which is definitely (pardon the chestnut) walking its talk.

The work of Corque Design is all of these and more.

This Portuguese company offers an interesting range of furniture & accessories, all crafted with cork taken from the Sobreiro (cork oak indigenous to the southern regions of Portugal).  Unlike wood, the harvesting of cork does not involve felling but merely the periodic gleaning of bark from the trees, which are left to continue growing in good health.  In addition to being a renewable resource, cork is recyclable, non-toxic and durable.  The bark is extracted manually, which involves no damage to the living tree, while the proceeding manufacturing process involves little waste and a low usage of resources.

But what really sets Corque Design apart from many environmentally-conscious companies is the sheer whimsy and versatility of its product line. Designers have lots of room to play.

Check out the modular seating system Lagarta, which can be configured to almost any whim, or the Puf Fup, a free-form seat of strung cork balls reminiscent of a bean bag gone wild.  Other options include the solid, toy-like Corqui and the more traditionally shaped frame chair, Vinco.

Moorish tile inspired another creation which can be used either as a desk or table, along with a matching sideboard.  In fact, the company offers three different sideboards, each with a distinct voice.

The theme can be carried further with cork hot bases for the dinner table, cork candelabras, even a wine frapé formed of cork.

But my favorite thing is the wall covering.  It’s simply beautiful and, through vibrant, is also soothing to the eye.  Other attractions are its natural ability to absorb noise, act as thermal insulation, and – the mom in me loves this – it is washable.  I hope more patterns are forthcoming!

In the US, Corque Design has product available at MoMA Design Store in New York, NY, and at Touch, in Los Angeles, CA.  An online store is in the works but in the meantime go check out Corque Design on the web.

~ Emerald

Not anymore!

Thanks to the folks at Inkshuffle, we renters can have our cake and eat it too.  How?  Reusable wall murals… or, “Easy Off” wall murals, as the company calls them.

I kid you not.  This is great stuff: fully customizable, fully personal, easy to use, and friendly to the environment because it can decorate your space more than once.  As if that wasn’t green enough, the adhesive used for the murals is non-toxic and the ink used to print the images is biodegradable.

There’s something at Inkshuffle for everybody.  There are 37 categories of images (over two million) of such a broad array that one could easily spend hours browsing the site – or, if you just gotta have that one special look, a picture of choice can be uploaded for a completely custom mural.  (1024×1024 size or larger is recommended.)  The mural can then be printed to the customer’s specifications, up to 20 by 20 feet square.

How this works is that all Easy-Off wall murals come pre-pasted, so they can be soaked in water for two minutes to activate the adhesive & then applied to the wall.  (The website includes a helpful page with illustrated instructions on how to hang the murals.)  When it’s time to remove the paper it can be peeled off without damaging the pre-existing paint.  Easy.

Once removed, the paper can be rolled up and stored for transport in a tube, which the company suggests obtaining from a designer or drafter.  At the new location, new adhesive will need to be applied to the mural before hanging – a little messy, but not difficult.

As I said, there are over two million styles to choose from, so the samples shown here are not even a drop in the bucket.  Go see!  Visit the site and have fun.  Like an image but don’t want to emblazon it completely across the wall?  Each is also available as a poster or printed on canvas for framing.

~ Emerald

The Mix ‘n’ Match 11 Wallpaper Collection, by Kirath Ghundoo, is being exhibited there this week.  It’s an exuberant assortment of digitally printed patterns, designed to be used in any combination you enjoy.  Because there is no need to match or repeat, there is no need for wasteful cutting and scrap (a great bit of built in sustainable design).  You can even use the strips individually to accent a painted wall.

There are seven patterns altogether, with LAVISH above being my definite favorite.  Love the colors!

To see the rest of the collection, visit Kirath Ghundoo’s shop here.

Thank for visiting!

Rachel

From Dutch design company Ecoreminders, this cute little guy is actually a PVC free vinyl decal that seeks to remind you of the wasteful water monster lurking in every toilet.

They also have some slightly more serious decals intended to remind you of what it takes to create the energy you use every time you flip the light switch.

OK.  Maybe they aren’t really all that serious!  Actually, the tongue in cheek aspect is why I think they are so appealing.  A gentle, humorous way to remind yourself to conserve energy and water.

Unfortunately, our friends in the Netherlands are the only folks able to get these at the moment.  I’m hoping they make there way across the Atlantic soon, because my house definitely needs a few extra monsters and hamsters – doesn’t yours?

I doubt he would’ve appreciated the subtle humor, or the fact that it’s printed in Los Angeles on recycled paper with water-based inks.  Ahab wasn’t much for the eco-friendly side of things, don’t ya know.

In fact, I imagine the only thing for him to be appreciative of is that none of the 3 colorways include white whales!