Noticias
y campañas
de la OCA
en españolTHE other day, Cody Anderson, an earnest young salesman at Montauk Sofa on Mercer Street, was extolling the many, many virtues of the furniture there while leading me to a buff-colored, chenille-covered, down-filled chaise longue called Stanley. "You want to get right onto it," he said, taking my bag. "Isn't that amazing?"
Ploompf. It did feel pretty good. Yet starting this month, the most noteworthy features of Stanley and other Montauk Sofa pieces will be facets you won't be able to see or feel, like wood frames from sustainably managed forests, uncoated nails, organic fabrics and stuffings, nontoxic dyes and, something extra: biodegradability.
"At first the whole idea was to have as little impact on the environment as possible," said Tim Zyto, chief executive of Montauk. "And then I started to think, wouldn't it be great to have no impact? Then it was, hey, what if the sofa just disappears when you're done with it?"
As much as this scenario sounds like it was lifted from a Philip K. Dick novel - vanishing furniture! - Mr. Zyto has attempted to make his imaginings a reality, at least in principle (if you disregard those pesky nails), joining a number of other home goods manufacturers and designers who are marketing their products as biodegradable. Not just "green," or "sustainable," but fully compostable, like lawn clippings or kitchen scraps. In theory, their products, under the right conditions, would break down, eventually.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/garden/08
biodegrade.html?_r=1&oref=login