Photo from Traditional Home Magazine: Zem’s dining room features a throw shag carpeting under her dining table. She only uses washable, removable carpets in her home for health and safety reasons.Tip 4 — Green Your Bedroom
On average, we spend almost 1/3 of our lives sleeping — that’s why it’s so important that we create healthy environments for rest and relaxation. But even the soundest night’s rest will not make you healthier if you’re breathing in dangerous toxins while you sleep. Fortunately, there’s an abundance of green products out there that will ensure your bedroom is a safe and environmentally friendly place to retire to at the end of the day.
GREEN MATTRESSES
Most mattresses are made with a variety of harmful, or potentially harmful, materials such as petroleum and fire-retardants. These chemicals, concentrated on the surface of the mattress, are absorbed through our skin and lungs. But don’t worry — there are plenty of eco-friendly organic mattress on the market. Some of my favorite green mattresses are made by Organicpedic by OMI, Green Sleep, Vivetique and InnoMax. Also when purchasing a new mattress make sure your old one doesn’t end up rotting in a landfill – contact one of these companies to take care of the hauling and recycling.
Photo from Traditional Home Magazine: Zem’s daughter smiles next to her eco-friendly bed and oversized stuffed animals.BEDDING
When creating the perfect healthy bedroom, one must also consider bedding. For organic bedding, I like Pottery Barn’s Organic Line, Amy Butler Design and VivaTerra (who makes duvets from peace silk). If co-sleeping is part of your routine and there’s a little one in the bed, you might want to consider Green Mountain’s wool peepee pads to protect your organic sheets and mattress.
Love the telephone bench – super cute look. Gonna go check out eBay for a treasure of my own
Many many quality piotns there.
Great tips for a safe home. Wonder LED lights should be considered especially for children’s rooms. CFL is really dangerous if it’s broken inside a home. EPA’s clean-up procedure guide is really scary.
i would like to know about the window dressing (1st pic). what material did you use? and is that a print on there?
Thanks for the tips! very simple, accessible and thorough
Thank you GREENGUARDEnvironmentalInstitute for reminding us that ‘no VOC’ or ‘low VOC’ are also low-emitting” Thanks for the tips on paint.
Green washing is an increasing issue. There are some advise on Green and how to become LEED certified interior.
Great article! It’s so important for people to remember that what’s “green” isn’t always what’s healthy!
One thing that’s REALLY important (since you mentioned VOCs in paints): not all paints labeled “no VOC” or “low VOC” are also low-emitting. The difference is VOC content vs. VOC emissions. Paint manufacturers can claim “no VOC” or “low VOC” as long as their paints don’t react with sunlight to product ground-level ozone (an OUTDOOR, not indoor, environmental issue), so they may not have been assessed for their impact on human health in indoor spaces.
That’s why it’s so important to look for a third-party certified paint–one that has been scientifically and independently evaluated for use indoors.
The GREENGUARD Environmental Institute is a third-party organization that certifies products (including paints, yes) to ensure that they’re low-emitting, healthier options for indoor use. There’s a bunch of information about VOCs, how products off-gas chemicals into the indoor air, and simple steps you can take to improve your indoor air quality at http://www.greenguard.org. We encourage you to check it out!
Great ideas…I wish more people knew how easy it is to implement some of these ideas.
Responding to Knortho’s comment about common sense and green rally. In the IDEAL situation we would always have local renewable materials used for all projects and one day we likely will have too once the resources for depleted.
Isn’t green rally about common sense? And would it not be better to have a local company tht rebuilds old windows or builds them locally support your blog instead of Marvin?
Smart, healthy and stylish green living can be created in so many ways.
Trope group have sensible options for helping create workplace business solutions.
Sofia you can researcher on the web who is local vendor in your area that sells cork flooring.
Love the article!! I live in Mexico and ecofriendly products are really hard to find. Do you know where I could find cork flooring in Mexico?
Thanks!
Indoor air quality is always worse than outdoor air quality. Consequently, the best first step to improving the indoor air quality is simply opening the window.
There have been significant advances in the past several years, so consumers can now actually test and measure the many pollutants in their own home’s indoor air at affordable prices. For example the Sierra Club used passive formaldehyde badges to discover the FEMA trailers. These are extremely easy to use and at $39 affordable for most. Considering California Air Resource Board found that 98% of the homes they tested exceeded the maximum formaldehyde concentration, the question is how bad is your home’s air. These are available on the Internet with one site being ACSbadges.com/formaldehyde.shtml
Yuka, clothing is absolutely the same story. There are many brands of gear that are well intentioned but uninformed. Organic linen and cotton can be great but when you mix them with polyester (recycled or virgin), you make the entire product unusable in the future – meaning they will end up in a grave (AKA; landfill). Natural fibers can go back to the biological system (soil) if not combined and many synthetic or man-made fibers can be reinvented by recycling them if they are not mixed with natural fibers.
gorgeous and green house! wonderful tips! can’t wait to try out the window treatments!
I’ve been on the hunt for new window treatments, and now I know exactly what to look for… Thanks, Zem!
I would love to live in Zem’s living room. Gorgeous.
Hey Zem, does what you wrote about monstrous blends go for clothing too?
Great tips Zem – I absolutely love the foot pedals idea and am going to try it in my own house as soon as I can!
Love your use of cork flooring too – fabulous!
I love this article. These tips are really accessible and easy to understand.
Love your kids’ rooms, Zem! What style!