Design Mobel - Sustainable Slumbers
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 07.25.07
A good bed is often touted as an investment. The inference being you’ll be getting a worthy return from that third of a life spent sleeping. But because beds usually last a long time, it also holds that we should want them to have invested wisely in their materials selection. Design Mobel is a New Zealand brand, (which we first mentioned a couple of years ago) with a modern aesthetic and an old fashioned sense of stewardship. For the bulk of their beds, and bedroom furniture, they source timber from a sustainably managed native forest on the NZ East Coast, via a program of selective felling, with logs being airlifted out to reduce soil impaction on the forest floor. For the slats on their Body Fit bases they use laminated layers of sustainable European Birch timber. Energise mattresses are of 100% natural latex, (tapped from sustainably managed rubber trees) wrapped in a layer of wool and covered with what they call ‘organic bamboo.’ Though we doubt the bamboo is certified organic, they do indicate it qualifies for the European Oeko-Tex 100 standard, which means its free of human toxins.
Design Mobel won a Sustainable Productivity Award last year reflecting their business ethos of planting a native tree for each bed sold, rewarding employees via a profit share scheme, reducing waste to landfill by 90%, converting their wood waste into heating briquettes and so on. And having seen their beds in the flesh they seem to make a comfy slumber pad to boot. Also available in Australia, Hong Kong, UK and now the US. ::Design Mobel.
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Airlifted timber doesn't sound very green.
We should go back to splitting rails using wedges and mallets onsite, instead of hauling huge heavy trunks out to the sawmill. The much lighter rails can be more easily handled by a couple of guys and a small truck or boat and can be sawn on smaller mills. It's true you can't get quite as many board feet out of split lumber, but it's often stronger, as the splits find the natural weak points in the wood.