Being green doesn’t mean having to compensate on style, and with a variety of eco chairs to choose from you’ll be able to find one to match the design of your eco home. Whether you want a beanbag for a child’s bedroom, chairs for the dining room or a plush sofa for the living room, there are eco chairs available for every room which are comfortable, smart and, most importantly, environmentally friendly.

Eco chairs made from recycled items

Using recycled items to build eco chairs is a perfect antidote to today’s throwaway society. After all, isn’t ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’?

Custom built eco chairs can be made from a variety of items which would otherwise be clogging up landfill sites. This includes old school desks, doors, discarded wheelbarrows and even shopping bags.

Having a custom designed eco chair made from recycled everyday items will give your eco home a unique talking point, as well as comfortable seating. The fact that custom designed eco chairs are often built in local workshops, rather than shipped overseas, means they have a smaller carbon footprint too.

Building eco chairs from sustainable materials

As with other furnishings in your eco house, eco chairs can be built from sustainable natural materials that can be harvested over and over again without causing long-term environmental damage.

Wooden eco chairs should be labelled as being approved by the FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council). This means they’re made with wood cut from a sustainably managed forest where the trees are replenished over time, rather than leaving vast areas of wasteland.

Other popular sustainable materials for eco chairs include bamboo, fibreglass and propylene, which is the most recyclable plastic around.

Eco chairs are also assembled using non-toxic and low VOC stains, paints and glues. This means they’re biodegradable and won’t cause damage to the ground if they need to be disposed of. Non toxic stains, paints and glues are also healthier for the air in your eco house, particularly if anybody in your family suffers from asthma.

Eco chairs using eco textiles

The textiles used for the upholstery on sofas and armchairs can also be made from sustainable materials. Synthetic textiles, like polyester and acrylic, are made from petroleum which is very polluting to manufacture both in terms of the energy used and array of bleaches, softeners and dyes pumped into the local water system.

Eco textiles, on the other hand, are made from natural materials, such as wool, organic cotton and hemp. These can be harvested over and over again, and when decorated with natural dyes they’re also less polluting to manufacture.

So whether you’d prefer unique, custom designed chairs made from recycled shopping bags or chairs made from sustainable wood, eco chairs can provide comfortable, stylish and environmentally friendly seating for your eco home.