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Creating a repurposed, recycled, and ethically friendly home doesn’t have to look shabby or break the bank. That slab of marble hanging out in someone’s backyard can be reimagined as a gorgeous table. Those plastic parts that look like trash can transform into beautiful art fixtures for lighting. With eco-conscious home design, treating Mother Earth with the utmost respect is always in style. Here are three companies making it easy for homeowners to be Earth-friendly and chic at the same time.

Carbonshack

Ecopreneur and founder of the design firm Home Front Build, Steve Pallrand and his team have launched CarbonShack, an LA-based design firm with a super team of environmentally focused architects, tradesmen, and data-analysts.

“No choice is free from impacts or consequences. We choose our materials not only to highlight the beauty of the natural world but to understand our role in the ecosystem,” Pallrand says. “When we design, we reach beyond aesthetics and begin with the methods of production in order to reduce negative environmental impacts.”

The company’s first ever design, called Casa Zero, serves as a case study for a new definition of green building. By integrating principles of high efficiency, low-impact materials, and natural aesthetics, Casa Zero provides environmental solutions for a variety of issues that remain unresolved by conventional green design. Learn more at www.carbonshack.com.

Meno Home

The furniture industry is currently the third largest user of virgin wood globally, contributing significantly alongside the paper industry to deforestation. Furniture also accounts for 12 million tons of bulky waste in U.S. landfills alone every year.

Jerri Hobdy, founder and designer of MENO Home, a sustainable furniture and home decor company, looks to identify waste reduction.

“The vision for Meno Home was to help people curate gorgeous, unique interiors with more truly sustainable furniture options,” she says. “To do so, we offer a timely mix of 21st century vintage that allows clients to layer in with our in-house line of clean, locally-made furniture. We reduce waste by keeping pieces from the landfill, any any time we refurbish, we do so to the same clean, chemical-free standards that we hold our in-house line to,” said Hobdy.

There are currently thousands of unregulated chemicals used in furniture production, such as highly-fluorinated chemicals (flame-retardants), VOCs (like formaldehyde), and other chemicals of concern to human health such as PVCs and antimicrobial coatings. In addition to eliminating these materials of concern from their products, MENO Home aims to reduce the use of plastics and virgin synthetic materials, and to design using as many truly renewable raw materials as possible.

MENO Home both sources vintage and manufactures made-toorder pieces only in North America to keep the transportation footprint of its pieces as small as possible. The company notes that it’s working to offer more in-house designs that push the furniture industry closer to the circular economy. Learn more at www.menohome.com.

Goodee

GOODEE is a B-Corp-certified online marketplace offering a curated selection of essential homewares and lifestyle products for better living from around the world. The company’s values of “good design, good people, and good impact,” dictate the brands they source, collections they curate, and products they design for the company’s in-house label. Most importantly, they connect people and communities with a common purpose through the platform.

“We conceived GOODEE three years ago, as we felt that many extremely skilled and underrepresented ethical makers desperately needed a platform to connect them with an equally committed conscious consumer,” said GOODEE Co-Owner Byron Peart.

He launched the website in 2019 with his twin brother, Dexter.

“As Black designers and entrepreneurs ourselves, who had previously built a lauded ethically designed accessories brand for more than a decade, we recognized early on how undervalued our voices and creativity were being woven into the sustainability conversation and were determined to make a significant change in the design landscape,” said Byron.

In 2007, the twins founded the brand WANT Les Essentiels, but shifted in 2018 to allow this new venture to take shape; assisting smaller, meaningful brands dedicated to offering sustainable solutions for modern living.

“It is very exciting for the two of us (and our very diverse team at GOODEE) to be now able to bring a fresh perspective and point of view to the conversations surrounding the need for an urgent shift in ethical production and conscious consumption,” said Dexter.

In addition to highlighting its own line of home goods, GOODEE also curates a unique mix of Black artisanmade pieces from around the world ranging from cushions and baskets, to clothing, bedding, lighting, and more. Learn more at www.goodeeworld.com.