Global warming is an issue which affects us all, and is in the news virtually everyday. Celebrities and the government are all telling us to drive hybrids, and rightfully start recycling much more. So should furniture manufacturers and retailers care? Yes. And there are great savings to be had by doing so.
For Tim Zyto, a Montreal furniture manufacturer and retailer, read a story in Time magazine that asked this seminal question: “Should we be worried about global warming?”
Zyto was very worried after reading it. “I was so shocked, I almost fell over,” he said. “Global warming is a man-made problem and all our consumption is part of the problem.”
But what to do?
He remembered hearing that such rock groups as Coldplay and the Rolling Stones were buying carbon offset credits through a British company to compensate the planet for their jet travel.
The company, Zyto learned, was The Carbon Neutral Co., set up a decade ago to help businesses measure, reduce and offset their carbon dioxide emissions. Starting with the premise that climate change affects the whole planet, businesses can finance environmental mitigation projects around the world and offset their own environmental footprint through Carbon Neutral.
So Zyto chose to help finance a tree-planting program in Uganda and a methane gas recapturing program in Pennsylvania to offset his company’s emissions after learning that his company, Montauk Sofa, produces the equivalent of 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually through its energy use and consumption.
Zyto, who started Montauk in 1995, has built it into a manufacturer of high-end sofas and armchairs with stores in Montreal, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Boston and San Francisco.
“I wanted to grab the fashionable customers, so we’ve always had our stores in industrial spaces,” he said.
The Montreal location on St. Laurent Blvd., near St. Zotique St., was the first furniture store in the neighbourhood and it kickstarted a trend, attracting other stylish furniture purveyors.
Zyto, who has a degree in sociology, learned about furniture making while working at his father’s firm, Biltmore Chesterfield, before it went bankrupt.
“I’d always wanted to be in the furniture business and had contacts at The Bay and IKEA,” he said. “But I knew it would take a long time before I would be able to sell the big stores furniture.
“So in 1992, I decided to build sofas and sell them directly to the public, and when I started Montauk, it was a one-man show,” he said.
“I had $800 and I would build and deliver the sofas on the roof of my car. At that time, I was selling them for $300 or $400, and self-financing the business.”
The company produces its wares in Montreal and sells them in stores across North America.
Zyto said that once he’d decided to buy into a carbon offset program, he contacted Jacqueline Kuehnel, the Canadian representative of The Carbon Neutral Co., who arranged with Pinchin Environment of Mississauga, Ont., to do an assessment of Montauk’s environmental “footprint,” or the impact of the firm’s operations.
Pinchin studied the energy consumption of electricity and telephone use, along with materials used to build the sofas and the effect of shipping the finished products across the continent. The verdict was that Montauk was producing 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Zyto chose two projects - one in Uganda, the other in the U.S. - that have been set up to mitigate environmental problems. Carbon Neutral invests Montauk’s money - between $32,000 and $40,000 a year - in them.
In addition, Zyto said he’s working on making his company as environmentally responsible as possible by sourcing green materials.
“It’s impossible to be totally green all the way through,” he said. “We still use energy to produce our products and to ship them.”
Kuehnel said there are engineering models that assess a company’s energy consumption and waste.
Carbon Neutral outsources the assessments to Pinchin Environmental, which evaluates all energy the business uses and also factors in the impact of such things as business travel by staff and daily commuting.
“That can be translated into how many tonnes of carbon is being poured into the environment. You can footprint just about anything,” she said.
Kuehnel said companies that have environmental assessments can choose to mitigate operations by, for instance, switching to alternate forms of energy use. “What they can’t reduce, they can offset,” she said.
The price to companies that buy carbon offset credits is between $18 and $25 Canadian per ton of carbon dioxide, “with forestry projects at the low end of the cost scale and wind farms at the top end,” Kuehnel said. One of the challenges for businesses that want to do their bit for the planet, she said, is finding suppliers that are also on board the green train.
“It’s difficult for businesses to find immediate solutions because of the supply chain,” she said. “A business can decide it does not want to produce carbons but also understands you can reduce only to a certain point.”
She said the company invests in such projects as reforestation, climate-friendly energy initiatives and methane capturing.
Zyto, for example, has chosen to invest in methane capturing at Gateway Coal Mine in Pennsylvania.
But, Kuehnel said, “there’s a strong attachment to forests among clients. People relate to forests better than they relate to methane flares.”
She acknowledged “there’s no magic bullet” in saving the planet from environmental disaster. “This is a complex issue and we have to tackle it on many fronts,” Kuehnel said.
She said the push to voluntarily buy carbon offsets often comes from visionary CEOs. “It’s an additional cost for industry, so it usually comes from a values point of view.”
Montauk’s Zyto is The Carbon Neutral Co.’s first Canadian client.
“He’s one of the early adopters,” Kuehnel said. “Canada is about three years behind (Britain) in terms of companies measuring their emissions. This is all open frontier right now.”
And Zyto is leading the charge. He’s aware that going green is as good for business as it is for the planet, and has decided to brand his company as carbon neutral. Montauk’s latest advertising campaign features ads depicting sofas that say: “Take a seat. Take a stand.”
“We sell thousands of pieces of furniture every year and I think customers would be thrilled to know that this furniture doesn’t have an impact on the environment,” Zyto said.
“If someone is going to make a lifestyle choice, they can also make an environmental choice at the same time.”
Information from: www.canada.com
Obviously it is a tough decision for furniture manufacturers to go all out and green. Cost is the obvious thing that people worry about. However the savings are there to be made. Tuning off shop lights at night will save you effectively a 1/3-1/2 off your electricity bill. Using less paper by printing less will also cut down on costs. Both of these would help the environment, whilst saving you money, yet cost nothing to implement.
