Eco Past Earth Day at Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn and West Elm
Seems like each week in April another hundred retailers debuted a new “organic” product just in time for Earth Day. But now that the dust has settled, which of these oh-so-eco launches is still on the shelves? Are retailers jumping on and off the green bandwagon, or are they on to stay? We looked at some of the biggest names in big box interior design to find out.
Search “organic” at Williams Sonoma online and you get two measly offerings—both boring white towels. Try “eco” and you get a doormat. And William Sonoma Home isn’t much better: “eco” gets you zip, and with “organic” you’ll find one skew of towels, two of bedding, and a $5,000 natural latex and organic wool mattress.
Perhaps sustainability isn’t the highest priority over at WS central.
But maybe that’s because they’ve put their eggs in a few other baskets, namely West Elm and Pottery Barn, two big box brands that are part of the Williams Sonoma corporate family. (What, you didn’t know?)
Granted, they’re still not delving into Fair Trade, but at West Elm they have 23 organic cotton products to choose from, including gorgeous organic cotton sheets and towels (in a range of colors other than white), lyocell-filled duvets, recycled glass drink ware, jute rugs, beds made with wood from “responsibly managed forests,” side tables crafted from fallen (rather than felled) cypress stumps and the drool-worthy organic cotton pin-tuck duvet pictured above. A great way to get to all these products is the company’s “live a little greener” link, which pops up when you click on any “eco” or “organic” item and directs you to a page where all of these products are listed.
Pottery Barn has a similar online grouping, accessed from the “earth friendly” box that pops up when you click on an item in that group—although simply searching “organic” gets you hundreds of items to choose from. In fact, PB has the most comprehensive selection of eco-friendly interior options we’ve ever seen—mainly because most of their signature sofas, chairs and other upholstered goodies can be ordered in organic cotton (like the sofa we featured on the home page).
They’ve even got an environmental commitment page that lists minimizing packaging and using recycled post-consumer waste in shipping, shopping bags and receipts, printing catalogues on Forest Stewardship Certified (but not recycled) paper, using materials like FSC certified wood, sustainable cypress, sea grass (as in the bed pictured below), jute and bamboo, and Oeko-Tex certified organic cotton, and outfitting stores with low-energy lighting as part of Pottery Barn’s effort to ensure an “ecologically responsible future.”
But perhaps the most impressive thing about PB’s environmentally-friendly offerings is the way that they’re integrated—like West Elm’s—into the mix. Without fanfare, more than 50% of Pottery Barn’s bedding now contains at least five percent organic cotton. Over at PB Kids, all that’s offered in the paint department is a Pottery Barn/Benjamin Moore collaboration on a line of zero-VOC paints.
Definitely not just an Earth Day eco-flash in the pan.
Looking for more organic love? To kick off our new EcoStiletto Membership Program that launches October 1st, we’ll be giving away FIVE oh-so-ecofantastic, $99 Pottery Barn Organic Cotton Spa Robes. Newsletter subscribers get first deets!
