Furniture You Can Feel Good About: What We’re Doing to Keep the Planet Green

Louis Interiors has a commitment to protecting the environment. In fact, in our industry, we consider it our responsibility. Mother Nature provides us with the materials we need to give you the best in luxury furniture from Toronto—from the soft maple wood we sustainably harvest to the variety of textiles we upholster your custom pieces with.

With our 50 years of experience, we know that going green doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality or aesthetics. Sustainability is not mutually exclusive from luxury. In fact, Louis Interiors was recently featured in an article about sustainable manufacturing at Plant.ca.

Our secret is keeping our own business practices small and sustainable. We focus on serving our clients and employees well rather than growing to an unsustainable size. Quality has a breaking point, and when that is reached, you settle for assembly line products and cheap labor rather than high quality craftsmanship. The way we see it, being friendly to the environment is just a natural extension of the philosophy we bring to every aspect of our luxury furniture production.

Take a look at a few of the initiatives we’ve maintained for years:

Sustainable Work Practices

We’ve dedicated our business to creating hand-crafted furniture using traditional European methods. Because of that, we don’t use conveyor belts, robots, or machines to do work that requires fine craftsmanship. This practice seriously cuts down on our waste and energy use.

We feel that sustainability is about creating balance. We don’t totally avoid technology. In fact, we’re quite fond of the computer software we use to ensure accuracy in our designs. But, each technology is considered for how it impacts our products, our customers, and the environment. We don’t need to be the biggest furniture manufacturer. We just want to be the best at serving our customer niche.

In fact, because we don’t use much energy in our production techniques by choice, it frees us to focus our green initiatives elsewhere in the company. And, that’s why we’ve turned toward finding more sustainable materials and finding ways to repurpose them when they can no longer be used for furniture manufacturing.

Finding New Purposes for Our Waste Materials

Nearly any material we use to make our furniture can be repurposed by other industries. Once materials have been cut down for use in a piece, they may not be practical for further use in Toronto fine furniture manufacturing.

That includes:

• Fabric scraps
• Leftover pieces of wood
• Sawdust

We always value quality and would not reuse a piece that does not offer durability and beauty to our luxury furniture. However, many other industries can use these smaller pieces. For instance, our leftover wood and fabric often goes to a local craft maker for new uses.

Green-friendly Sourcing

We’ve written before about our dedication to sustainably sourcing the wood for our fine furniture frames. In fact, our wood sources are certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council. That same soft maple wood goes into every piece of luxury furniture we create. A wood frame is absolutely necessary to a quality piece of furniture, but trees are also vital to our planet. So, it’s important to us to choose a wood that balances our two priorities—quality craftsmanship and sustainability.

But, we don’t stop there. We make choices at every level between materials that could harm the planet and those that offer a safer alternative. For instance:

• We source local wood in order to reduce shipping emissions.
• We dry our wood with a kiln rather than chemicals that leave waste and pollute the air.
• We avoid fibreboard products containing formaldehyde.
• We continue to seek out materials with the lowest toxicity levels for our lacquers and finishes.
• We use fast-growing, herbicide-free hemp to tie down coils.
• We use strong, biodegradable Jute webbing for upholstery support.
• And, our cotton felt used to protect furniture from the coils is 100 percent organic.

Where can you find a better blend of craftsmanship and green practices from a luxury furniture supplier? Feel free to contact the knowledgeable staff at Louis Interiors with any questions you have about our sustainability practices. We’re happy to talk to you!