February 8, 2008

Sustainable, Eco-friendly Home Decor… for a Greener Planet

We have so many choices in our lives today, and I always encourage you to think about what you’re buying or bringing into your life with an eye for how it impacts your future, your health, and your well-being.

I live on an island and there is only one landfill. Twenty years ago, the landfill was a big hole in the ground but now there is a huge mountain and massive recycling efforts are underway to reclaim steel (recycled), glass (converted into gravel and paving pieces), and lumber (converted into mulch). When I buy products now, I always think first: is it sustainable? is it beautiful? will it make me happy? is it recyclable? will I keep it?

When you’re thinking about furnishing your home, I invite you to look at Nouveau Earth Accents. This company, founded by Leia Tunnaye in the San Francisco Bay Area, designs and produces beautiful home accent pieces that integrate art, culture, and distinctive style using natural, renewable resources. Nouveau Earth Accents’ goal is to create elegant, lifestyle décor pieces and functional products for the home using materials that support our environment.

Tunnaye chooses many products as exclusive signature lines that are not available from other sources: the majority of the items in her inventory are handmade in boutique workshops by artisans who craft the products. Tunnaye’s goal for the company is “to concentrate their supply and production from villages and small cooperatives that are family and community oriented.”

Bamboo
The company is most well-known for creating bamboo pieces. Bamboo is one of the fastest growing grasses in the world:

it is a sustainable, natural resource
it reaches heights of 40 to 60 feet in about 5 years
it is strong enough to replace wood
bamboo may beharvested in 3-5 years versus 10-20 years for timber wood

Nouveau Earth Accents is bringing to market or highlighting bamboo products from flooring, fencing, pulp for paper, food, kitchen utensils & tableware, furniture, and crafted pieces for home décor. In the last three years, Nouveau Accents has co-developed a process to craft large standing vases from spun bamboo: they’ve been successful in creating gorgeous floor vases up 5 feet tall! Benefits of these vases are that they are lightweight, easy to move, biodegradable, and handcrafted from an abundant, green resource: they’re also great-looking.

Mango
Mango wood is another sustainable product that Tunnaye and Nouveau Earth Accents has been evaluating. They are currently working with craftspeople in the villages of Northern Thailand to design and create large vases and other home accents from this recycled and constantly renewed resource. All of their mango wood products are hand crafted in small villages by families working from their homes. The crafting skills are also passed down to the next generation, instead of younger people growing up and leaving their village for the big city.

Sustainable Foliage
Finally, Nouveau Earth Accents is constantly seeking alternatives to today’s pesticide-ridden floral accent pieces. They currently use tall palm stalks, giant pod leaves, coconut leaf stems, rubber tree leaves, and other botanical material that are dried and hand dyed into stunning combinations. Tunnaye also works closely with California growers to supply her company with local, fresh cut branches and foliage such as mazanita, willow, and dogwood.

If you’re going to be making choices for gifts and your own interior design this year, I encourage you to look at the Nouveau Earth Accents catalog here:
www.nouveauaccents.com

Also encourage your local furniture store or home decorator to carry Tunnaye’s products. They’re gorgeous and they support the company’s mission to create “sustainable, eco-friendly home decor… for a greener planet.”