As stated by Florence Knoll, “Good design is good business.” That famous phrase has proven to be equally good
for the environment. The best way to keep over 1.5 million tons of office furniture out of landfills annually is to
design quality furniture with a timeless aesthetic appeal.

Knoll’s environmental mission is to manufacture affordable, well-designed office furnishings in the most
environmentally responsible way. As an industry leader, significant and unique accomplishments for Knoll include
the following:

• In 2002, Knoll received Greenguard certification is achieved for all Knoll North America systems, seating
  KnollStudio seating and KnollTextiles.
  
  
• In 2009, Knoll announced that it will be supplying FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified wood as the
  standard for general office open plan office systems, casegoods, and tables. This will be provided as standard without asking, at no surcharge and at standard lead times.
  
  
• The Generation chair, introduced in 2009, received the first SMaRT Platinum rating in the industry. SMaRT is perhaps the most stringent rating system thus far, and goes well beyond furniture and into other architectural products as well. SMaRT is to products what LEED is to buildings. It is a global measurement that includes a life cycle assessment.

PDF - Environmental Timeline
PDF - Key Focus Areas at a Glance
PDF - SMaRT Consensus Sustainable Product Standard
PDF - Knoll and the FSC Certified Wood Standard
PDF - LEED
PDF - Knoll Sustainable Wood Policy

www.knoll.com

Movable walls, with infinite horizontal furniture hanging capabilities, low-profile access floors and modular power,
are all built on the principles of Reduce and Reuse. Reconfigure these architectural components over and over
without sending waste to the landfill. DIRTT products are designed to be dismantled at the end of their life for
clean recycling. DIRTT:

• Is the only North American Commercial Interior manufacturer to offer waster-based finishing solutions for all veneered surfaces. No off-gassing occurs during the manufacturing process or in clients’ workspaces.
  
  
• Veneer wraps aluminum instead of wood substrates on all surfaces. This saves thousands of board-feet of lumber.
  
  
• Was the first manufacturer in the industry to use the world’s only supplier producing Forest stewardship
  Council (FSC) certified wood and urea formaldehyde-free medium density fiberboard (MDF).
  
  
• Uses Chroma-coat, DIRTT’s paint. With its water-bourne lacquer pigment, Chroma-coat has even lower VOCs than even LEED requires.

PDF - DIRTT and the Environment
PDF - DIRTT Impact on LEED CI
VIDEO - DIRTT Environmental Story

www.dirtt.net

Among other environmentally friendly floor covering providers, ELEMENTS represents Interface. Interface is a true
pioneer in their industry and in a broader industry of sustainability. The ultimate goal of Interface is to “sustain the
environment by taking nothing from the earth that we cannot easily and rapidly replace.”

• InterfaceFLOR modular installs with less than 4 percent waste versus up to 13.1 percent of waste for
  broadloom. The invention of the i2 product line carries this one step further. Inspired by nature with no
  two tiles being alike, these non-directional patterns work well together no matter now installed. Mergeable
  dyelots eliminate need for additional attic stock. Certified by the Climate Neutral Network, all greenhouse gas emissions emitted during the life cycle of the product are offset or balanced.
  
  
• Carpet can sit in a landfill for 50 years before it starts to decompose, and can take up hundreds of thousands of square yards of limited landfill space. Interface’s ReEntry Program recycles used carpet carpet into pellets, which are loaded into their Cool Blue backing line for reuse. Since the inception of ReEntry in 1994, Interface has diverted more than 84 million pounds of carpet from landfills.
  
  
• Interface was the first carpet manufacturer to use fibers made from polylactic acid (PLA), a commercially viable plastic made from corn. Most of the Interface flooring in ELEMENTS showroom is made from this fiber.

www.interfaceflor.com

HON believes that environmental responsibility is a journey, not a destination. The HON Company embarked on
its journey more than 60 years ago, when they crafted one of their first product lines out of recycled scrap metal.
Their goal is to keep striving for improvement anywhere and everywhere they can.

• In 2006, the HON Company became the world’s first office furniture manufacturer to have products certified
  by the Indoor Advantage program. Developed by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), Indoor Advantage
  subjects products to the most rigorous indoor air quality standards in the United States. Indoor Advantage
  provides detailed analysis of a comprehensive range of chemicals rather than a simple pass/fail for only the most common providing for opportunities for continuous improvement.
  
  
• Rather than newly harvested wood, HON uses postconsumer wood waste for many seating components.
  Basically, HON is recycling wood that has already been used for other products and is now being discarded. This process, enables HON to save 5000 acres of virgin forest and divert nearly 10,000 tons of wood waste from landfills every year.
  
  
• Only HON has developed an atypical panel material, called Nature Core, used as a substrate within systems furniture panels. Nature Core is a natural fiber called kenaf, which is derived from an annually renewable plant related to cotton and okra. No formaldehyde is added to Nature Core, and the material is fire retardant while yielding a Sound Transmission Coefficient (STC) rating exceeding BIFMA standards.

PDF - Our Environmental Journey
VIDEO - HON Thinks Green

www.honthinksgreen.com