Furniture store Chest of Drawers in the UK is launching a rating scheme to help customers understand the environmental impact of their furniture purchases. Their system rates furniture according to the wood source, workshop practices and furniture miles, and they only sell furniture from sustainable and responsibly-managed sources in the long term that rates well in the system. Says Kim Corbett, a director at Chest of Drawers, "There are some good initiatives in the pipeline from specialist NGOs such as the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and WWF (World Wildlife Fund), but we feel it is incumbent on retailers like ourselves to take up the gauntlet and move towards sustainability today." Chest of Drawers appears serious about keeping this up; they've matched some walk with their talk by dropping three suppliers who didn't seem all that fussed with improving their methods of production. The company also buys clean energy from Ecotricity (we covered them here), recycles office waste via Paper Round (as audited by the London Environment Centre) and offers staff a bicycle through the government’s Cycle to Work scheme. The furniture itself, while not cheap, is built to last a lifetime, and is versatile enough to match many styles and decors, so we doubt it will need to be replaced or upgraded any time soon. Check out their full collection. ::Chest of Drawers via ::Hippyshopper

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