If you’re thinking of investing in banquette seating for your venue, you may be considering the environmental impact of its manufacturing. Many businesses are striving to become more sustainable – not only does this help to preserve the planet for future generations, but it also provides an attractive selling point for environmentally-minded customers.

Sustainable furniture follows a closed-loop cycle of recycling. It should be built to last, add zero waste to landfill and be versatile for recycling at the end of its life span.

Here’s how we manufacture sustainable banquette seating at Craftwood.

Sustainably sourced wood

For timber to be sustainable, it must be harvested responsibly from well-managed forests. These forests are continually replenished, ensuring that every tree cut down is replaced with a new one. Trees are removed without damaging the surrounding environment or other fauna and fauna.

To craft furniture, timber can be hardwood from broad leaf trees – such as beech and oak – or softwood from pine and fir trees. Softwood trees tend to be more sustainable due to their fast-growing qualities, making them quicker to replace. Hardwood trees require careful management to be grown and harvested sustainably.

At Craftwood, all our timber is sourced from forests with the FSC forest management certification. This confirms that the forest is managed in a way that maintains high conservation values, preserves biological diversity and benefits the lives of local people and workers.

Eco-friendly fabrics

Most upholstery fabrics are made from 98 per cent plastic. Sustainable fabrics for furniture and banquette furniture are produced from eco-friendly resources, such as responsibly grown fibre crops or recycled materials.

In the furniture industry, longevity is the keyword; this means that sustainable materials must be durable, resisting deterioration and crafted for longevity. Fabrics should be easy to maintain – for example, stains should be quick to remove to ensure that they remain in good condition for a long time.

There are a range of eco-friendly fabrics to choose from when designing your banquette seating with Craftwood. Bamboo, plastic, industrial hemp, recycled polyester, wool, silk, soy and sustainable cotton are all popular choices of sustainable material.

Recyclable padding

Banquette seating is padded with foam, which can be difficult to dispose of sustainably. Scrap foam is often burned, a harmful process which releases toxic fumes into the environment.

At Craftwood, we strive to recycle all leftover materials. Currently, the only available method to dispose of scrap foam sustainably is to turn it into chip foam. When granulated into millimetre-sized pieces, foam can be compressed into various densities for uses including carpet underlay, packing, floor mats and sound-proofing panels.

Get in touch today to discuss your sustainable seating requirements with a member of the team.