Copeland Furniture is Green Furniture

Preservation and stewardship are values that run deep in Vermont. We take pride in the quality of the environment and the natural beauty that surrounds us. We also interact with the natural environment in a more intimate way than our friends in more developed areas. Many of us make our living working with the land and the forests and even more of us hike, canoe, fish, and hunt. Taking care of that which surrounds us and feeds, clothes, and shelters us is an ethic that spans generations and is held by Vermonters in all walks of life.

Here are some of the ways that our environmental values are reflected in each piece of furniture that we make:

We use sustainably harvested hardwoods from the American Northern Forest

The Northern Forest is among the healthiest in the world and is actually growing in terms of standing biomass. The capacity of the Northern Forest to absorb carbon dioxide is growing each year. The forests of Vermont are no exception, now covering over 85% of the landscape. The lumber we use comes from within 500 miles of our factory. Living and working in and near the regions that supply our raw materials means that far less fossil fuel is consumed and less carbon dioxide emitted through transportation.

We are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified

We work with the Smartwood program of the Rain Forest Alliance. Their program requires us to work with suppliers who can certify that the wood we purchase from them comes from forests that:

• are not threatened
• do not have high conservation significance
• do not contain genetically modified trees.

Smartwood audits our purchase records annually. Whenever feasible, we purchase wood that is harvested from FSC-certified woodlots and processed by FSC-certified sawmills.

We create durable furniture with timeless designs that will last generations.

Heirloom-quality furniture has less environmental impact than a piece that will fail or has a “fashion life.” Using beautiful hardwoods from the American Northern Forest, it only seems right that the furniture should be built to last. We use time-tested joinery and construction methods, combined with durable finishes and quality hardware. We’ve always prided ourselves on clean, well-proportioned design that works well in many environments. Today, we’re particularly proud to have been selected to build the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright — furnishings that work as well today as they did in the early decades of the 20th century.

We work in Vermont, the state with the highest environmental standards in the nation.

We comply with strict regulations on air quality emissions, hazardous waste, worker safety, and storm water runoff. We work to recycle and reduce packaging material and volatile solvent. We participate with the New England power pool to generate our own electricity during peak usage times, helping to reduce the capacity requirements of the electric utility companies. It would be much cheaper and easier to make furniture in a place that didn’t regulate air and water emissions or demand healthy work places but the cost to the environment would be too great.

We’re not done.

While the environmental impact of our factory and the environmental cost of the furniture we build for you is among the lowest, we’re not standing still. We’ve reduced VOC (volatile organic compounds) emissions by over 50% over the last 3 years. We’re working with our finish suppliers to reduce them further. We’re testing water based finishes. As finish products improve they will allow us to further reduce emissions and burn less fuel. We’re also looking at ways to reduce packaging material, increase recycling, and decrease landfill use. We’re looking at ways to cleanly convert wood waste to heat energy for our own building to further reduce our comsumption of imported oil.

We view sustainability as a process and a journey of continuous improvement. We’re committed to that journey.