The most environmentally friendly thing you can do in purchasing furniture is to find a local or US maker and buy a product that is built to last generations. In the same logic that recycling is good, but it still uses lots of energy - while re-using is better as it doesn't have to convert matter to another form and therefore uses minimal energy, buying furniture built locally to last generations is much better than buying "Green" furniture shipped across the ocean and built to last ten years. The latter will then have to take up landfill space or be burned. The former has a small carbon footprint.

The best furniture is made from real wood. Consider the longevity of antique furnishings, beautifully crafted from real, solid wood, handed down for generations and still in great condition after decades - in some cases, centuries - of use. Much of today's furniture sold at retail is fashioned from particle board rather than solid wood. Particle board is made by bonding wood chips together and compressing them into sheets. When used for furniture, it is topped with a veneer (a thin layer of real wood) to give the piece the appearance of being made from solid wood, but particle board, unlike solid, real wood, is prone to denting and chipping and does not hold up well. You can rest assured that the furniture you find in a store bearing the "Real Wood Furniture Finished Your Way®" seal is crafted of genuine wood. That seal is your guarantee of quality. It means that all structural components are either solid wood or plywood, a material composed of multiple thin layers of solid wood, glued at right angles to each other for extra strength and durability, and finished with a veneer in a specific wood. Ready-to-finish furniture is available in a wide variety of hardwoods, each with its own distinctive grain patterns and colorations. Among the most popular choices are alder, ash, beech, birch, maple, oak and parawood, a wood from the Far East with a grain similar to mahogany. Among the soft woods used for furniture, Eastern white pine, ponderosa pine and sugar pine are popular U.S. varieties, while Radiata pine is a plantation-grown variety from South America with a beautiful grain pattern.

The unique beauty that the grain patterns inherent in real wood impart to ready-to-finish furniture is just one of many reasons for choosing these carefully crafted, solid wood pieces. Additionally, real wood furniture is extremely durable and long lasting so that it does not need frequent replacement. And in an age in which the green movement is rapidly growing, real wood furniture, made from an all-natural resource, is the perfect choice for your home.