Outdoor Retailers Get the Eco Fitout Bug

The Piton (an outdoor punditry blog) had a story the other day where they proclaimed ‘Someone Call TreeHugger.” So figured we might as well oblige and reference the articles they’d found. The first is a tad thin of detail. But, as best we can make out, The North Face have opened their twelve US retail store which utilises pressed bamboo in the fixtures. Plus they use Brazilian cherry wood, which we can only hope they sourced through someone like Eco-Timber, given that it is a tropical hardwood.

The other outdoor retailer infusing their stores with a little green is Gander Mountain. With over a hundred stores through the US, they are opting for a greener flooring via Lees Carpet for new shops and refurbishments. As best we can make out the carpet itself is anything special. The backing holds the eco story. Known as Encycle, (Warning - another annoying Flash site) the backing is free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and contains 35% pre-consumer recycled content and 28% less raw material than normal modular carpet tile backing. Apparently the backing can recycled back into itself, mostly due to a technology known as Self-Lock, which is a releasable adhesive system that binds the backing the carpet fabric, eliminating, we are told, waste and off-gassing.

Via The Piton.