The Retail revolution. Where to buy eco design for your home.

Eco homewares and contemporary eco furniture are becoming increasingly mainstream as a new breed of independent online retailers champion green design. The signs are that eco homewares and furniture are set to enter the mainstream as ethical consumer spending soars (up 11% says The Co-operative). Oliver Heath, of Changing Rooms fame, certainly thinks so, claiming, dramatically, ‘This will be the industrial revolution of our time’.

His impassioned belief that sustainable and recycled, design-led products – categorized by his EcoCentric online venture as ‘urban eco chic’ – are challenging the pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap approach of the high street, is certainly ethically compelling.

Eco chic is not new it has to be said. But witty and stylish though the iconic designs by high-profile designers like Tom Dixon, Ross Lovegrove, Piet Hein Eek, Fernando and Humberto Campana, and husband and wife team, Tord Boontje and Emma Wooffenden.

are, they have, to draw a parallel with the fashion industry, failed to translate from catwalk to high street.

One hurdle is accessibility: many of the designs are, not to put too fine a point on it, bonkers. Price is, predictably, another issue: putting products, which are typically hand-crafted and/or made in Britain into mass production is by conventional measures, unprofitable. And, in the case of recycled design another challenge is, ironically, securing a reliable supply of the right waste materials.

Such factors prevented Boontje’s and Woffenden’s tranSglass range of sculpted wine bottles, conceived back in 1997, from making the leap from studio to factory production for seven years. ‘Technically production is not difficult,’ comments Boontje, ‘the problem is that most factories do not have the infrastructure to collect and clean used bottles.’ Setting up a new production facility in Guatemala has been the successful solution.

Move away from the hot lights of the celebrity designer arena and production issues increase. Max McMurdo of Reestore, whose inspired designs using unpromising waste like shopping trolleys and windscreens have graced the window of Selfridges, Oxford Street, says, only after five, long years, has he noticed a shift in attitudes and ‘companies are now starting to come to me’.

Exhibitions like [re]design and The Eco Design Fair have sprung up to help young eco designers reach a wider market and promote the idea of sustainable design, but what’s really needed is a dedicated eco style emporium: a green version of Heal’s or Habitat, to champion designers and win over consumers.

Enter Oliver (Heath)’s army: a band of design-savvy, environmentally-motivated, online retailers who have been quietly massing (Brighton’s a particular hotbed of insurgency), determined to overthrow the established belief that ‘eco’ and ‘design’ are mutually exclusive terms. Nigel’s Eco Store was launched in March 2005, followed by By Nature in June, The Natural Store in August, Eco-Boudoir in October, Biome Lifestyle in December, and EcoCentric and The Lazy Environmentalist in, respectively, April and June 2006.

What they share is the belief that design is key to developing the green lifestyle market. Annabelle Randles of By Nature puts it this way: ‘No-one is going to buy a product they do not like just because it is sustainable. We want to change the perception that if something is organic or recycled it’s not very interesting or exciting.’ Virtual stores help keep costs roughly on a par with non-green alternatives sourced from the Far East, although several companies divulge the long-term aim is to develop the real thing.

It won’t be easy. Andrew Jones, who launched Hen & Hammock, focusing on environmentally-friendly, garden kit in September 2006, volunteers, ‘The only way people will succeed is if they feel passionately about it. Costs are too high to set out to purely make money.’

Biome Lifestyle www.biomelifestyle.com
By Nature www.bynature.co.uk
Eco-Boudoir www.eco-boudoir.com
EcoCentric www.ecocentric.co.uk
The Eco-Design Fair www.ecodesignfair.co.uk
Hen & Hammock www.henandhammock.co.uk
The Lazy Environmentalist www.lazye.co.uk
The Natural Store www.thenaturalstore.co.uk
Nigel’s Eco Store www.nigelsecostore.co.uk
[re]design http://www.redesigndesign.org
Reestore www.reestore.com

Recently launched in 2007
The Green Haus www.thegreenhaus.co.uk/
Eco One Interiors

Contemporary furniture for the home. Storage, shelving and home office furniture, offering contemporary style and sustainability. Further information on eco furniture, eco designers and eco-retailers is available on this site www.ottofurniture.com.