Introduction
A lot of companies talk about their "sustainability" policies, but it seems very few back this up with real actions. At Custom Carpentry we genuinely put sustainable thinking at the heart of everything we do - the building industry has the potential to create a lot of environmental problems but these are mostly problems that can be fixed by simply switching a few products or checking where your products are coming from.
We offer an Eco option for your furniture. We are pioneers in the field of Eco bespoke fitted furniture and have produced some fitted furniture using some materials htat have never been used before in fitted furniture and other eco friendly materials such as strawboard, recycled plastic, low wattage lights and clever design to extend the usefull life or your furniture.
We can do all grades of Eco fitted furniture and can describe the environmental and financial impact of each from just usuall fitted units using Ecos waterbased paints to AURO’s top totally natural paint made of natural materials and from formaldehyde free mdf wood to the newer formaldehyde free MDI strawboard made of straw, we have a big list of things we would be pleased to talk to you about and tailor your eco fitted furniture exactly to your storage, health and sustainability needs.
For customers going for our standard non eco option we use quality DULUX and Farrow and Ball water based paint which has no odour due to it not being made with oil or solvents. This makes it a better product than their oil based paints but is still far from being an eco paint.
Earthborn natural solvent-free paint
The simplest way to "green" your units is by using easily available natural eco-paint. We can paint your units using ECOS paints, see their website here for more information on their products. Because we are keen to use and encourage natural paints we don't charge any more for using this paint.
But for an even more sustainable, and environmentally friendly paint we offer Earthborn which uses mostly natural materials to produce one of the most environmentally friendly range of paints available.
We can use other similar eco-paints too, such as Earthborn, Biofa, AURO, Nutshell and others. Contact us for more details
Straw.
We are the first company to be supplying and installing 56 mm thick straw board floating shelves. These feature a straw front edge, with the tops and bottoms of the shelves painted white - if you don't want to see the straw colour on the front edge we can paint this part too. This board is made in England and uses no glues to hold it together. It is very dense and very strong.
Some of the recycled plastics that we can use to make to make your fitted furniture, in the centre is recycled corrugated roof plastic with shredded and suspended Bank of England notes trapped inside
Recycled plastic.
We also offer transparent recycled plastic panels made from confiscated counterfeit CDs or old, shredded Bank of England notes suspended in recycled water bottles. We use these in front of spot lights to make an illuminated feature.
Recycled glass.
We can also use recycled glass for desk or dressing table countertops.
Fillers & Sealants.
We make our unit look seamless by joining them to the wall using a water based flexible filler that uses reusable plastic outer packaging saving many tons of plastic waste per year. More information on this product is available here.
We also use waterbased and solvent free Gripfill Gap Filling Adhesive when required.
We source our stationary from The Green Stationary Company, use recycled paper and toilet paper, natural light, natural cleaning products by ECOVER and we turn off our electrical devices overnight.
Good Energy.
Custom Carpentry have been using Good Energy's 100% renewable and clean energy to run its business since 2003. They use wind, sun, water hydropower and green bio generation using biomass and biogas - find out more about it here. They are a UK based company that is totally independently owned and they have been around long before other traditional companies jumped on the green tarrif band wagon.
The Phone Co-op.
Since 2003 we have also used The Phone Co-op for our landline and freephone telephone services. By being a co-op they are "owned" by its users and they run on green electricity too. You can read about their ethical policies here.
We work from home, helping to minimise travel miles and we use public transport to get to jobs whenever possible. All our waste paper is shredded and used as bedding for our chicken.
The company chicken getting on with some paperwork
All our MDF wood is of the highest quality and made by Medite who only make low formaldehyde MDF. MDF uses fast growing pine wood that is not suitable for either making wooden planks or for the construction industry. This means it uses a waste byproduct, turns it into sawdust and then pushed back together under high pressure to form the large sheets that we use to make our quality fitted furniture.
If you want to go greener than than this we can also use a board totally free from formaldehyde called Medite Ecologique or alternatively Medite Exterior, both of which push up the materials cost by a factor of 4. We can also use hardboard backing which uses no glue whatsoever and is just wood fibres pressed together at high pressure.
Trees are a forever renewing resource
All our wood is FSC vertified which means that it is managed responsibily; Medite for example plant more trees than they cut down. Also being FSC certified means that the rainforest is not being cut down to make our fitted furniture.
There is more materials our fitted furniture that make our company Green, there is the underlying philosophy and genuine care for our children’s future and our health, as well as the respect of what we have been given to take care of and pass on to our future generations, this includes ethical business practise.
We are an honest company whose main aim is to delight our customers, we are supported by other good companies that help us towards our goal of living a good and honest life such as
We are powered by sustainable energy
The Co-op Bank.
Since 2003 we have been with The Co-op Bank. They are an ethical bank that invest our money into good causes - they don’t invest in arms, oppressive regimes, nuclear power or tobacco amongst other things. In 2008 they where voted the UK's most ethical brand.
It is important to replant trees in order for them to remain a sustainable resource - if the cycle isn't completed then it doesn't work. With this in mind Custom Carpentry will plant a tree for every customer taking one of our eco options, even if it is just having your units painted with eco paint.
Of course these trees won’t be cut down to make into wood or paper - the important thing is the idea it represents. Trees are the lungs of the earth as well as beautiful places to walk and play in for people, children and animals.
We are helping rebuild Britain's forests.
We plant trees via the Woodland trust who do a lot to encourage businesses, people and schools to plant trees.
The Woodland Trust will take care of your tree for 12 years in a forest called Heartwood in England, helping re-eastablish the forests that were felled over the centuries when wood was a major building material. Replanting trees was not a priority until the FSC scheme came into being.
