Recycling The Past is a vintage/antique building supply store located in New Jersey. The store offers a wonderful variety of products ranging from mantles to hardware to doors, all of which may be viewed online. Two of my favorite products are the sinks and the tiles. There are nine pages of stunning tiles in a range of shapes, colors, and styles. The collection of decorative tiles is incredible; some of them are amazingly detailed.
Buying vintage furniture is super green, but it's not always easy to find pieces in great shape, especially upholstered items. Lotus Bleu has fixed that problem for us. They offer vintage pieces redone in new, modern fabrics. Lotus Bleu is located in San Fransisco, but if you're not in the area, you can order right online. Current items for sale are displayed in addition to items that have already been sold, to give you an idea of what might be available at any given time.
Well, I just want to kick out a shout to the writers at EarthFirst -- they've found a way to make us blush not just once, but twice. Much to my surprise, I was invited on their list of Top 25 Hottest Guys in Green: 10 We Missed Last Time (scroll down to #7). No worries, though, I'm working my way up the list, so hopefully you'll find me on the original Top 25 next year -- maybe somewhere between Brad Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio?! But enough about me, how about Jetson Green contributor extraordinaire Sarah Meredith Roe! She made their list of Top 25 Hottest Girls in Green: 10 We Missed the First Time (scroll down to #3). Sarah beat out green belles such as Sheryl Crow, KT Turnstall, Amber Valetta, and Norah Jones, just to name a few. If that doesn't make a green writer blush, I'm not sure what does. Thanks EarthFirst for thinking of Jetson Green!
Surfing Cowboys, located in Venice Beach, California is a hip spot for vintage shopping. The store offers furniture, accessories, lighting, artwork, and a unique collection of vintage surfing and skateboarding items. And if you can't make it to Venice Beach, you can shop their store online.
Looking for a simple, affordable, and eco-friendly way to furnish a home? Check out Victory Vintage Home for vintage furniture and accessories. One of the most environmentally friendly things that you can do is to re-use materials that already exist. Even new, environmentally-friendly materials often have some negative impact on the environment. For instance, furniture made from bamboo is called eco-friendly because bamboo is a rapidy renewable resource, but you then have to figure in the distance that bamboo usually travels to get to the United States. You would also want to know how it was harvested and a variety of other environmentally important factors.
This fridge has a fantastic retro appearance and could save you a lot of money on your utility bills. Designed by SMEG, it's a compact 9.22 cubic feet and uses only 305 kWh/year. That makes it one of the most efficient it its class according to the government's energy guide, which is used to rate all Energy Star appliances. This stylish fridge isn't big -- it's under 5 feet tall, but maybe it will encourage you to trade space for style and save energy as a result.
Oceanside Glass Tile offers an absolutely beautiful line of glass tiles. Not all tiles contain recycled content, but a good amount of them do. The recycled content is according to the tile color. For instance, cobalt, has almost 75% post-consumer content. The great thing is that you can see which colors contain recycled content, and how much, right on their site; there is a simple table that makes it easy to evaluate your color choice.
Duro Design is offering a beautiful collection of eco-friendly Eucalyptus flooring. The wood is grown in managed forests in Europe and is available in 12 colors ranging from gray to natural to a warm apricot color. Premium German and Swiss pigments give the flooring its wonderful tints and depth of color.
Amcork, a Texas based company, offers an incredible variety of cork flooring and wall covering options. Their flooring is available in floating floor planks (12"x36") and glue-down parquet tiles (12"x12"). Wall tiles are 12"x24" size. There are two things that set this company apart from others that I have found: price and style. Amcork has 21 colors of wall tiles and 25 colors of flooring available.
Harmony Art, based in California, is an organic fabric company which was started a few years ago by a woman named Harmony. She designs all the prints, most of which are inspired by nature. The colors are wide-ranging and the prints are modern and fun. They offer jersey, interlock, twill, denim, sateen and flannel.
I am using her solid white sateen, which has a slight sheen, for our living room curtains. The fabrics are of wonderful quality and start at around $15/yard. You can visit her site to find online retailers, which is how I ordered my fabric.
