Ethical furniture purchasing

Green issues continue to become more and more important in all walks of life, and furniture is no exception. However, there are a plethora of different schemes and requirements in the market place that can make ethical purchasing confusing. In this article FIRA International’s technical manager, Phil Reynolds, highlights two important initiatives for sustainable furniture. The first – the Government Buying Standard for furniture, currently being developed by DEFRA, looks at the environmental impact of furniture products, whilst the second – the Furniture Industry Sustainability Programme (FISP) – looks at ensuring that manufacturers and suppliers have an ethical and environmentally-friendly approach to business.

Government Buying Standards
DEFRA has been tasked with developing Government Buying Standards. These are mandatory buying requirements for central government purchasers, and they are designed to ensure that products and services purchased by government meet minimum environmental/sustainability requirements. There is also a desire for these guidelines to be seen as best practice and rolled out to local government and business in general.
    
A number of Buying Standards already exist, with others in development, including furniture. The buying standard for furniture is currently in the enquiry phase with final publication expected in July 2010.
    
The new buying standard focuses heavily on the materials used in the product, which means:

• Requirements to minimise the amount of harmful and hazardous substances in the base materials.
• Requirements to minimise the amount of harmful and hazardous substances in surface finishes.
• Requirements to minimise the amount of harmful and hazardous substances in adhesives.
• Requirements to minimise the amount of substances that do not biodegrade effectively.
• Performance requirements for furniture (it should be remembered that a product with a long life is essentially much more environmentally friendly than a product that fails and needs replacing regularly).
• Requirements for timber to be purchased from legal and sustainable sources – effectively meaning that suppliers need to have a suitably endorsed chain of custody scheme in place for timber based products (e.g. certification to FSC or PEFC chain of custody schemes).
• Where possible products should be designed for re-use/remanufacture or re-cycling.
• In addition there will be a push for purchasers to look at buying re-used/remanufactured products to stimulate this market.

Adapted to UK standards
The standard is heavily based around two EU initiatives – the Green Public Procurement plan, and the Ecolabel scheme. However, these have been modified to reflect the requirements of the UK industry, specifically to allow the types of fire retardants we need to meet UK National Standards, and to allow for formaldehyde levels in chipboard and MDF to be at levels that are low enough to be safe, but are commercially available without significant cost to the industry.
    
The standard has been developed with industry consultation, however, there are still some concerns within the industry regarding the additional cost burden that will be put on manufacturers and suppliers attempting to prove compliance with the initiative, and also whether some of the requirements are achievable – in particular the requirements for surface finishes which effectively mean only water-based lacquers can be used on timber products (which is not the UK’s preferred finishing technique). These issues are likely to be ironed out in the final consultation phase.
    
More information on Government Buying standards can be found at the Sustainable Development area of the DEFRA website, together with draft requirements for the furniture scheme: www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/advice/public/buying/index.htm. This website can not only be used to follow the development and publication of the standard for furniture, but also to find information on other schemes either published or in development, and to find products that comply with published schemes.

Sustainability programme
Whilst the Government Buying Standards look closely at the products and the materials used in the product, due to purchasing law they do not evaluate the supplier and his manufacturing techniques. This is obviously a major omission, as the environmental impact of a product is as much due to manufacturing and its processes as it is the materials that go into the product.
    
When evaluating a supplier there are many features that need to be assessed to verify that they are a responsible, sustainable manufacturer. Sourcing all this information, and verifying it, can be an expensive and time consuming process.
    
Launched in 2006, the Furniture Industry Sustainability Programme (FISP) was developed by the furniture industry to demonstrate, in one easy-to-understand scheme, that a furniture manufacturer is a responsible manufacturer. Membership of the FISP scheme is therefore an ideal tool for specifiers to use when evaluating their suppliers.
    
FISP is a true sustainability programme, focusing on not just environmental issues, but also purchasing, end of product life, social and community issues. When a furniture manufacturer signs up as FISP member they have to commit to two core criteria; they must have, and implement, a suitable environmental policy, and they must comply with all legal requirements regarding environmental and health and safety legislation.

Environmental & social needs
In addition they must have systems in place to tackle a number of other key environmental and social topics including:

Environmental requirements:

• Environmental management systems

• Waste management

• Energy management

• Packaging

• Transport

• Procurement policies

• Sustainable timber purchasing

• Emissions

• End of life

Social and economic requirements:

• Nuisance issues

• Community relations and charity work

• Education and training

• Employment

• Ethical issues

• Competitiveness

The manufacturer’s claims are then verified by an independent audit by a sustainability expert, with the audit process being repeated every two years to ensure ongoing compliance.
    
By selecting a supplier who is a member of FISP, a specifier can have the confidence that they are buying from a responsible, caring supplier at the forefront of sustainable manufacturing/sourcing in the UK.
    
More details regarding FISP, and current FISP members, can be found at the FIRA website – www.fira.co.uk/consultancy/environment/fisp

For more information
Tel: 01438 777700
Web: www.fira.co.uk