Ikea: Chopping Down Forests = Sustainability!

The Green Miles was recently in the market for a new desk and coffee table, so I went searching for sustainable options. I ended up going with Legare Furniture, which is Forest Stewardship Council-certified and uses what it calls eco-friendly finishes.

I haven't found any independent sources that verify Legare's eco-friendliness. But in my brief furniture search, it was rare to find a company that even bothered to claim sustainability.

And then there were claims of sustainability that were laughable. Check out Ikea's note in a coffee table's description:

Chop down an old-growth forest to make cheap furniture? No sweat, it'll grow back ... eventually. Let's just hope "eventually" comes before the planet gets too warm for them to grow back.

Ikea has made some progress on sustainability, reducing energy use, setting goals to make more of its products from recycled material & sustainably-managed forests, and eliminating plastic bags. But it has a long way to go -- just look at the National Wildlife Federation's 2009 Garden Furniture Scorecard (PDF). Ikea received a measly one star.

Could I have saved a few dollars by shopping at Ikea? Sure. But I'd much rather spend a bit more for products that reflect my lifestyle -- and I'm not talking about square chairs.

Smart shopper footnote: You can get Legare products much cheaper (and in many cases with free shipping) through Amazon.com, Walmart.com or KitchenSource.com than you can through the Legare site.

Harry Potter Gets Greener

One of my environmental pet peeves? When someone is described as "going green" for taking only a small environmental step, as if installing compact fluorescent bulbs or planting trees or getting 5% of your power from renewable energy makes you The Lorax or something.

So while I don't think the following qualifies Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as green, the National Wildlife Federation points out it's a step in the right direction:

After hearing from outraged citizens across the country when they didn't publish book six of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter on recycled paper, Scholastic has changed its ways! For the first printing of book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...

* 65 percent of the paper used will have the Forest Stewardship Council stamp of approval -- meaning it comes from forestlands that are managed in an environmentally responsible way. Certification assures that much of the paper for this book is not harming the birds and other wildlife dependent upon Canada's intact Boreal Forest--a critical shield against global warming.

* 30 percent of the paper will be made out of recycled content -- another big step forward in the book publishing business!

E Magazine breaks down exactly what that means:

This monstrous paper order of 16,700 tons will do a lot more than may initially meet the eye. By switching to 30 percent recycled paper, just the English-language editions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows alone will save: 197,685 trees, an area 2.5 times the size of New York’s Central Park, or a whole lot of Whomping Willows in Hogwarts terms; 72,074,421 gallons of water, enough to fill 218 Olympic sized pools or make 6.3 trillion batches of Polyjuice Potion; 17,364,063 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, equal to taking 1,577 cars off the road for a year or stopping 8,420 dragon burps; 9,255,366 pounds of solid waste, which is the weight of 4,999 full-grown elephants or 2,364 fully-grown dragons like Norbert; 137,609 million BTUs of electricity, enough energy to power 1,512 homes for a year and equivalent to the energy in 154 million lightning bolts. (Source: Markets Initiative, using the Environmental Defense Paper Calculator.)

You can thank Potter's publisher here. But you should also encourage them to go even further. 100,000 copies of the deluxe edition will be printed on 100 percent recycled paper. Why not every book? And why not print the book using soy-based ink?

Now that would be environmental wizardry. Oh, come on, you didn't think I'd go a whole blog post about Harry Potter without some cheesy magic reference, did you?