A Look Into Our Sustainable Future

Sustainability is an integral part of Sklar Furnishings. This is evident in our showroom and also with the vendors from which we source our products. If we impart the importance of the environment in positive ways both internally and with those we work with; we’ll have a better chance at affecting change. Transparency in our actions is key to this change and below; you will see our goal for the next 6 months and the actions we will take to make this possible.

Sklar Sustainability Goal: To decrease our GHG (Greenhouse Gas) by 10% over the next 6 months.

Actions to Achieve Goal

1. The Green Team All staff on our showroom floor is encouraged to recycle when possible. Moving forward, we would like to construct a ‘Green Team’ to ensure we are making strides for a recyclable friendly workplace. The ‘Green Team’ would also be educated on best practices and help others become more environmentally savvy. Car pooling will also be encouraged along with all appliances being switched off at the end of the day.
2. LED Lighting / Air Conditioning A number of years ago we replaced all incandescent light bulbs in our showroom with new energy efficient LED bulbs. Moving forward, we plan to monitor the number of KW we use each month compared to last year. This will be made possible as Florida Power and Light highlights the usage on each bill. The goal here is to reduce our usage year-on-year. With our tinted showroom windows, we also plan to reduce our air conditioning usage.
3. Reuse Products Old fabric, drapery and wallpaper samples are often given to schools, churches and Design institutes so they can be reused. Again, we have so many materials left over in our showroom, the goal is to give more back to our community and let less materials go to waste.
4. Increase use of old paper All staff are encouraged to reuse old paper as scrap and in some cases, as office printing paper. With the help of our ‘Green Team’, the objective is to make this compulsory for all employees.
5. Tree Program In previous sustainable blog posts, we mention our tree initiative (donate a tree for every wood-based product we sell). This is something we are truly passionate about and continue to monitor. At present, we donate an average of 250 trees per month. Our goal is to increase this number to 300 in the near future.
6. Sustainable Vendors During our Saturday sales meetings, we reach out to our vendors about their sustainable practices. It is great to hear what our partners are doing to create a sustainable future and often, we will take their ideas and put them into practice in our showroom. It also shows our vendors that we care about the environment and prefer to source partners who care too. One trend that has started to surface is the use of water based varnishes and dying for leather. The general public are asking for this and it is now something we always enquire about with our vendors.
7. Donate Unused Products At Sklar, we currently donate unused products to Habitat. For example, mattresses used in our bedroom sets on the showroom floor would get donated and products that have cosmetic damages but still function. We believe we can do more and moving forward, we would like to increase our donations.
8. Sustainable Furnishings Council Through our affiliation with the Sustainable Furnishings Council, our services are continually being analysed and graded. It is our goal to constantly surpass the targets set by the SFC and become an industry leader in sustainability.