Peel-and-stick designs for effortlessly eco-friendly walls
Champagne Telmont introduces an ultra-lightweight bottle
The cost of convenience and the rise of circular design
BY ANNA DORL
With summer in full swing, now is the perfect time to turn your home and garden into a sustainable sanctuary. Whether you’re nurturing a small herb garden on your windowsill or cultivating a lush backyard paradise, embracing eco-friendly practices can help you live in harmony with the environment and build a greener future. With autumn and winter just around the corner, now is the time to make the most of your space with sustainable choices that benefit both your home and the world around you.
Typical toilet brushes are constructed from nasty plastic that festers germs and eventually gets thrown out to sit in a landfill for years on end. Thankfully, Grove Co. has found a more sustainable solution — one made with a replaceable head. Made with recycled aluminum and plastic, the brush includes a base of diatomaceous earth — a natural rock that absorbs excess water while resisting mold and bacteria. Grove Co. also sells brush head refills when it’s time to switch it up, available on a subscription service. The company is a Certified B Corporation and commits to free carbon neutral shipping on orders $29 and up. www.grove.co
The Oya™ Watering Pot provides hydration to plants even if their people are away, and its porous clay construction can reduce water consumption by 70%. It’s available in small, medium, and large sizes, so no matter what type of garden you have, you’ll find the perfect fit. According to Oya, your plants’ roots will reach toward the pot after it’s been buried in the soil, connecting themselves to the water to take their perfect drink. Fill up the spout with water and replace its colorful cap, and you’re good to go. This unique product is good for all types of gardens and green life, grass included. www.growoya.com
Azuna’s Luxe Whole Home Kit offers a sustainable response to the issue of stinky spaces. Instead of air fresheners and heavy aerosols filled with phthalates, chemicals, and endocrine disrupting ingredients, consider something a little healthier. The kit comes with four Luxe Glass jars and a 24-ounce Odor Eliminator & Air Freshener Gel Pouch. (If you subscribe, Azuna throws in two free Auto Pods for naturally freshening your car). Each item is vegan, biodegradable, phthalate-free, and based in tea tree oil with a variety of scents available. The odoreliminating gel can destroy odors at their origin naturally for up to 90 days, perfect for stenches from mold, mildew, and more. www.azunafresh.com
Modern Sprout’s Produce Keepers – propagation plates to extend the lives of herbs and greens – are the perfect product for your kitchen and garden. Melamine, bamboo, and corn starch provide the construction of each Produce Keeper in a BPA-free, food-safe format. This combo connects strong and sustainable materials to create a unique, useful product. As a set of two, each item offers a different width to accommodate different sizes of green stuff. Placing one of these Keepers above a container of water can keep a plant fresh for up to two additional weeks. It even fits on the rim of a drinking glass, so you don’t need a special container. www.modernsprout.com
While there are many ways to dust your home and get your surfaces spic and span, there’s nothing quite like a good oldfashioned duster. Instead of using real feathers like a typical feather duster, this selection from Marley’s Monsters encourages sustainable cleaning practices at home. This washable duster is made from “dust-seeking” organic cotton fleece, affixed to a wooden handle finished with tung oil. Simply pop the fleece duster head off of its handle after use, machine wash it, and use it again and again. Available in seven color choices with or without a wooden handle, this reusable item will keep your home squeaky clean. www.marleysmonsters.com
BY BETH WEITZMAN
AA few weeks ago, I walked into a friend’s apartment and did a double-take — her once-bare wall was now a striking black-and-white geometric masterpiece. I figured she’d splurged on a pro installer, so I asked for the contractor’s name.
“Oh, I did it myself,” she said, pointing to a roll of peel-and-stick wallpaper. Impressed, but ever the clean-living skeptic, my first thought was, ‘What’s actually in that wallpaper?’
I wondered what might be off-gassing behind that stunning print.
Curiosity quickly turned into a mission to find peeland-stick brands that offer standout designs with clean, non-toxic, sustainable materials that are safe for people and the planet. Step into the world of three eco-savvy brands — Huggleberry Hill, Bobbi Beck, and Chasing Paper — that show how highimpact design, best-in-class safety credentials, and conscientious materials can reinvent a room while also keeping well-being front and center.
EUROPEAN PRECISION MEETS FABRIC LUXURY
Picture a peel-and-stick wallpaper that feels like linen, contains zero PVC, and meets the same safety standards as children’s toys — that’s the bar Huggleberry Hill set for itself.
CEO and Founder
Hannah Mansour-Phillips explains, “Huggleberry Hill was born out of a desire to create a more thoughtful, sustainable approach to home decorating, and one that didn’t compromise on style, quality, or safety… Our mission started with a
simple question: What if wallpaper could be beautiful, functional, and healthier for people and the planet?”
Months of material sleuthing led her team to a specialist European printer whose certifications outpaced anything they could find stateside. The resulting peel-and-stick panels are produced on a woven-polyester faux-linen textile that is 100% PVCfree and fully REACH- and RoHS-compliant . UV inks are cured instantly — no solvents, no lingering odor — and carry the Greenguard Gold seal. They are both MOSH- and MOAH-compliant while meeting the DIN EN 71-3 Toy-Safety standard, making them safe even for nurseries and playrooms.
Two standout lines anchor Huggleberry Hill’s catalogue: the moody Deep Dark Woods series and the newly launched Meadowbrook collection, which channels founder Hannah MansourPhillips’s English roots with layered countryside florals. Both formats — removable peel-and-stick and long-wear nonwoven — are printed in small batches to order, trimming production waste while letting customers recycle panels. Mansour-Phillips suggests starting with high-traffic spaces — kitchens, baths, kids' rooms — where washable, breathable materials matter most. www.huggleberryhill.com
After years immersed in the wallpaper world, James Beck and his co-founders of sustainable luxury wallpaper brand, Bobbi Beck — wife Rebecca MellanMatulewicz and Jason Arrowsmith — realized the status quo couldn’t last. Consumers and the planet were demanding something cleaner.
“It therefore seemed like the obvious thing to focus on when launching Bobbi Beck,” Beck says.
Zero-waste initiatives at the company start at the press. Every roll is printed to order, eliminating excess stock. The peel-and-stick base pairs 95% FSC-certified cellulose with 5% PET for durability.
Beck notes, “We ensure our products are free of PVCs and other harmful chemicals by working closely with our suppliers and investigating our supply chains.”
The wallpaper is finished with Greenguard Gold–certified, non-toxic water-based inks and backed by a silicone-coated kraft release liner. Each roll ships in plastic-free packaging via a carbon-neutral courier with complimentary U.S. delivery.
Instead of clinging to a single style or catering to a narrow niche, Bobbi Beck maintains a wide-ranging design library, with each pattern produced to the same exacting eco standards. The newest head-turner is the Persian Collection, which reimagines traditional motifs in bright jewel and sun-washed hues — museum-worthy
peel-and-stick patterns that go up and come down with effortless ease. www.bobbibeck.com
“Great design belongs to homeowners and renters alike, which is why we started with peel-and-stick products from the beginning,” says Chasing Paper co-founder Elizabeth Rees. She shares that removable or temporary wallpapers “should still be crafted with care and quality in mind.”
She adds, “As Chasing Paper has grown over the years, we have remained committed to offering high-quality, design-forward wallpaper that can add personality and style to a space while maintaining a healthy home.”
Chasing Paper’s peel-and-stick wallpapers are printed in Milwaukee with Greenguard Gold–certified latex inks and are low-VOC, PVC-free, and phthalate-free, keeping indoor air safe for families and pets. The fully recyclable poly-woven substrate is water-resistant and wipes clean with warm water and a soft cloth, so colors stay sharp for years.
Chasing Paper’s portfolio continues to evolve. The Fariha Nasir collaboration (launched in February) translates South Asian block-print artistry into peeland-stick form; the in-house Heritage Collection updates classic motifs for modern walls; and fresh patterns from Jenni Yolo of I Spy DIY put a playful spin on the current block-print revival, offering renters and homeowners even more ways to make a stylish, health-conscious statement. www.chasingpaper.com
Look for third-party seals: Greenguard Gold, FSC, REACH and RoHS verify low VOCs and responsible sourcing.
Skip the PVC: Cellulose, poly-woven fabric or woven polyester deliver durability without chlorinated plastics.
Mind the ink: Water-based latex or UV-cured formulations with Greenguard Gold certification keep installation fumefree.
Order smart: Made-to-order printing and generous sample programs slash waste and guesswork.
What’s the lifecycle? Choose substrates that can be recycled — many poly fabrics and all-paper liners qualify.
BY MAURA KELLER
FFrom insulating the walls of a library in Edinburgh, Scotland, or constructing a historic manor in the French countryside, to building a charming guest cottage in Finland, using straw as a building block has been embraced by people across the globe for centuries.
In the U.S., building with straw bales was made possible by the invention of the horse-powered baling machine in the 1870s. According to Catherine Wanek, author and photographer of The New Straw Bale Home, The Hybrid House, and Designing with Sun, Wind, Water and Earth, transient farm workers across the American Midwest immediately saw the potential of stacking straw bales to craft temporary shelter.
“The first known permanent straw-bale houses were built by settlers in the sandhills of Nebraska in the 1890s. Homesteading rolling grasslands with few trees and soil too sandy for sod homes, some pioneers used what was at hand, stacking bales for walls and plastering them with local ‘gumbo mud,’” Wanek says. “These proved to be comfortable shelters, and some of these structures are still standing today.”
One of the first bale homes owned by the Simonton family, 1890s settlers in western Nebraska, made from baled meadow grass.
As Wanek explains, straw is plentiful — essentially a by-product of food production — as it’s the leftover stalk of wheat, rice, oats, barley, rye, etc., after the grain is harvested. It’s also a natural, non-toxic material, especially compared with manufactured insulation materials. It also has much lower “embodied energy” (the energy used to make and deliver a material to the building site).
“Bale walls are seismically resistant, and in an earthquake are amazingly resilient. Bale walls also reduce sound transfer, which is an advantage in urban environments,” Wanek says. “And counterintuitively, they are actually fire-resistant, too. Once plastered, bales are essentially air-tight, so that even if exposed to fire, there’s not enough oxygen within the wall system to support combustion.”
Perhaps the biggest benefit of straw bales is in the creation of an insulated wall system. As Wanek points out, measured in a variety of tests — from Sandia National Labs in New Mexico to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee — their insulation value, also known as R-value, equals or surpasses that of fiberglass insulation. The thickness of a bale, around 22 inches when plastered, delivers a superinsulated wall system of R-30 – R-40.
“In practice, depending on the habits of the inhabitants, super insulation can reduce our heating and cooling needs by 60 to 80% over conventional materials,” Wanek says. “This enhances comfort, reduces energy bills, and shrinks our carbon footprint in two ways. Saving energy saves the burning of fossil fuels, and since straw is basically carbon, encapsulating straw inside walls sequesters literally tons of carbon per home, until the house reaches the end of its life, decades in the future.”
While pioneers typically built their homes with a single-story hipped-roof design (often with a room in the attic) — using the minimum of lumber and allowing bales to directly support the roof — contemporary builders generally opt for a wooden or steel structure, using bales to fill in the walls, floor to ceiling. According to Wanek, this “post-and-beam” approach allows for multiple-storied structures and is easier to get code approval. Although straw-bale construction is accepted in the International Building Code (IBC), building codes vary state to state, and even county by county.
“Depending on regional climate zones, house foundations might be an insulated concrete slab in cold and dry climates, or might be elevated above the ground to allow air flow and reduce the chances of flooding in wet regions and conditions,” Wanek says. “In all climates, it’s essential to raise the bale walls well above the potential for moisture, which typically means elevating them at least six to 10 inches above the ground level, and also a few inches above the final floor level.”
Outside and in, bale walls must be plastered, which functionally seals the bales from insects, vermin, precipitation, and fire. The coats of plaster should be permeable, to allow moisture vapor to move through the wall and evaporate on the outside. Permeable plasters can be clay, lime, gypsum, or lime-cement stucco.
“Impermeable coatings, like an elastomeric stucco or ferrous cement, impede this vapor movement, potentially allowing moisture to condense inside the wall,” Wanek says.
The enemy of straw bales, and most building materials, is moisture. So dry climates are much more friendly to bale construction than wet, rainy climates.
“That said, straw-bale homes have been successfully built in the American South as well as cold coastal climates like Washington state, Nova Scotia, and Denmark,” Wanek says. “In these challenging climates, straw bale walls are often protected from driving rain with a ‘rain screen’ or wooden shiplap siding.”
During construction, keeping the bales dry until they are under the roof also is challenging. In addition, finding an architect and building team that has experience with bale construction is a distinct advantage.
“While straw-bale building seems simple, there are many tricks of the trade that will save time and money, so doing your homework by reading, consulting, and even volunteering on someone else’s build, always pays off,” Wanek says. “A welldesigned straw-bale home is a resilient home. Given the uncertainty of modern life, and the potential for an occasional failure of the electrical grid, a superinsulated structure with passive design is a resilient structure that can remain reasonably comfortable in times of both cold and hot weather.”
Ingredients
1 fresh peach
2 ounces (about two cups, loosely packed) baby arugula
3 teaspoons balsamic glaze, divided
1½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
⅓ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon cracked black pepper
½ each burrata cheese (half of a standard ball)
1 ounce (about 1 slice) Prosciutto di Parma
1 teaspoon balsamic pearls
1 tablespoon fresh mint, finely chopped
Directions
Cut the peach in half and grill until lightly charred. In a bowl, toss the arugula with olive oil, half of the balsamic glaze, kosher salt, and black pepper. Cut each grilled peach in half once more and shingle the slices on one side of the plate, then drizzle with the remaining balsamic vinegar. Pile the arugula salad on the remaining half of the plate and sprinkle with fresh mint. Cut the burrata ball in half and place the cut side up on top of the arugula. Finish by spooning the balsamic pearls over the burrata and seasoning with a touch of olive oil, salt, and pepper.
