Environmental Considerations
At Navascues Upholstery, we do our very best to protect the environment at all stages of running our business. We see ourselves as avid recyclers and are constantly introducing new measures to reduce our carbon footprint.A few improvement measures include;
- Replacing workshop and showroom lighting with LED
- Replacing toxic spray adhesives with low toxicity products
- Recycling and repurposing timber for frame repairs
- Optimal minimisation of waste disposal
- Recycling of cardboard for templates and reuse of paper.
- Use of low impact fabrics (eg: Geco fabrics) and also predominant use of fabrics that display Environmental rating system (ERS). ERS takes into account the technical specifics of manufacturing each product, from farming practices and energy consumption, through to mill waste and recycling programs (eg: Wortley, Warwick).
- Making consistent efforts to recycle as much existing material as possible.
At Navascues, we strongly believe that re-upholstery and recycling go hand in hand. By extending the life of furniture through re-upholstering, you prolong the life of the product. As a result, you minimise the need for additional resources and energy to manufacture new furniture.
When you consider furniture as a lifetime investment, it is often the case that re-upholstery is just as cost-effective as 'throwing away and buying new. What’s more is the satisfaction of knowing your furniture choices are not contributing to landfill, nor having an adverse impact on the environment.
In the old days, people had to look after their things. Following consumerism in the 1950s, it became commonplace to just replace broken items with something bigger and better. The same can be said for furniture. The majority is imported and manufactured quickly and cheaply, but the quality has dropped dramatically. We work hard to improve the quality of these imports when they come to us, however we encourage people to source existing furniture from the vast array already available locally. After more than 50 years in the trade, we are pleased to see increasing numbers of Melbournians recognise this, as they move toward making ecologically sustainable choices.
Upholstery is a great way for people to exercise creative license in their own home and reintroduce an existing piece with a modern stylish look. That said, the option of re-upholstery is not just limited to antiques or heirlooms. Many people assume that only older pieces of furniture can be upholstered because the frame and build quality is assumed to be higher. This may be the case but some modern day furniture is of a high quality too. In most cases, we return items in a more superior condition because aside from recovery, we are constantly improving and reinforcing the original internal frames, to make the piece stronger than ever.