GREENWASH THIS...

Words  ::  Tyee Bridge  //  Images :: Joel Puliatti

In a recent Upholstery Arts ad, next to a juicy photo of a condo-size, lime-green chaise sectional, CEO Len Laycock penned an open letter to his clients. “Terrible things that ought to be unthinkable have become normal,” wrote Laycock. “In the furniture industry, ‘normal’ practices have resulted in chemical fire retardants from polyurethane foam contaminating your breast milk, toxic heavy metals from textiles in your blood, and a chemical stew of toxic volatile organic compounds from lumber, glue, stains and padding, off-gassing into your lungs.” While indicting the furniture industry for ecological malpractice,  Laycock also took a swipe at the BC government for snuffing legislation that would require labeling of toxic compounds in consumer products. “Industry conceals information about toxins in the products you buy. Instead of removing toxins, their cynical game is to ‘greenwash’ everything dirty… It’s time for new standards. Let’s bring 70 years of unregulated chemical experiments on humans to an end.”
Not your usual ad for a designer of club chairs and camelback sofas. This could be written off as hysteria, or savvy marketing by a designer seeking to differentiate his wares. But Laycock is no greenwasher: UA is a world leader in cradle-to-cradle design. If you choose not to return your aging couch to UA to be fully recycled, you could chop it up and put in your garden. This is beautiful furniture you can eat.

That’s a pretty intense ad.
Yeah. We’re trying to draw out the differences, because there’s a big educational process going on here.

You mean for customers?
In their busy lives, generally people never think about the safety of their sofa. You’re not going around thinking, ‘Is my sofa safe, will it biodegrade, will my children get cancer or leukemia from it?’ They’re not going around thinking that. But I am. I’ve thought about it very deeply.
Why? How did that happen? 
It started in the late nineties, reading about global warming—when it wasn’t a headline issue, before An Inconvenient Truth and everything—and I would think, ‘Is this as bad as it seems?’ The next day I’d open the paper and read an article debunking it. I wanted to know the truth, get at the nub of the matter. So I just started reading. I buried myself in ecological topics. I read about peak oil theory, greenhouse gases, I even went back and read Silent Spring. 

Wow. The classics.
Yeah, I just started reading, and one book became another. Cradle to Cradle by McDonough and Bromguard, Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, that was a major one. Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia. And I started to make connections with various organizations—the Pembina Institute, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecotrust, World Wildlife Federation. And I started to question myself.

Trying to reconcile what you were learning with your business.
For one thing, I was using polyurethane foam. This is an oil product. There are issues of conflict and politics with oil, as well as health issues. I started looking at all that. And I went to my suppliers in the business; I’d talk to the VP of a foam company on the phone and say, ‘Could you give me a list of the chemicals in the product I’m buying? You know, I’d like to know. Just to put my mind at rest.’
And the most amazing thing happened: I got radicalized. Because the people I had known for years and spent annually hundreds of thousands of dollars with, they wouldn’t answer my questions. They were all still friendly—‘Sure Len, let me get back to you on that.’ A week later I’d get a call from a sales rep saying ‘Well, Len, you know, they just don’t want to put that stuff on letterhead.’ And I’m saying, ‘You’re kidding me! Is it really that bad?’

You started to look behind the curtain.
I got into it and I realized, this is really bad shit. And it’s not on anybody’s radar. So then I’m checking everything, lumber, foams, dyes, textiles. I get really knowledgeable. But the thing is, I’m not doing anything about it.
Then one Sunday in 2005, beautiful early spring day, I decide to wash my car. My son, Eli, who was 10 at the time, he’s hanging around not helping me. And he looks really glum. A sunny, gorgeous day and he’s unhappy, so I ask if something’s wrong.  ‘No.’  OK. I go back to washing. Ten minutes later he’s still dark, and I sit down beside him. When I ask him what’s going on, he says, “If I tell you, will you promise not to laugh?’ I say I won’t laugh. He says, ‘I’m afraid the world is going to end.’
I’m actually getting upset talking about it. It just cut me. Because I knew exactly what he was talking about. He’s reading all this stuff in school, all the awful ecological news, global warming, all that, he watches TV, he hears about it. And there are millions of kids just like him.

Sounds like a pivotal moment.
It was a flashback for me to the Cold War, hide under your desk, build a bomb shelter. And just I thought, what the hell are we doing? I reassured him, and he went on with his life. But I didn’t. I went to bed that night and I couldn’t get to sleep. A kid growing up with that thought in his mind... it’s a theft of hope for the future, from the generation coming up, the people we have the greatest promise in. They need the excitement and enthusiasm to do great things in their lives. I thought, ‘This can’t be. This can’t be left to stand.’
And because I’d done all that research, the moment it became deeply personal I was prepared. I came in on Monday to work and that was when it started.
For the Full Article, Pick up Issue 11 +

Pictures:

Details: