Eco Home Ideas

Every year more than 10 million unbroken pieces of furniture are thrown out of British homes and sent to landfill. The environmental impact is quite dramatic. “For every one tonne of furniture or electrical appliance that is thrown away,” explains Helen Middleton of the Furniture Re-Use Network, “you’re talking about five to fifteen tonnes of carbon worth attached to that material…And when you’re talking about climate change it’s the carbon, not just the landfill issue, that we should be talking about.”

So, what can be done? You can follow in the footsteps of TV journalist Jonathan  Maitland who recently took on the challenge of furnishing a house in one week, using exclusively used, reclaimed or free furniture. And all this for a budget of £500.

Eco interior designer Oliver Heath was called in to help, as were some unversity design students. Instead of traipsing round the usual furniture megastores, the team visited reclaim yards, logged on to online Freebie network Freecycle and used various community repaint and furniture re-use schemes to help them in the task.

It was an eye-opening experience. “Over the past few weeks I have spent more time than I care to admit at scrap and recycle yards across east london-where the waste mountains are just shocking,” says Oliver Heath

The programme was a chance to show viewers that with a little imagination and creativity, the items that others throw away can be brought together to create a stylish and contemporary home.”

How did they approach the task? “We unified house and furniture by painting everything  white (luckily the most common paint colour found in local community collection schemes!) and then added bursts of colour and pattern through vintage fabrics and  wallpaper offcuts. As a result the house has a very funky patchwork look, which also makes it feel fun and relaxed.”

The final result was miles away from the “uniquitous flat-pack Scandinavian” look prevalent in so many homes across the country. “After all , we were using pieces largely produced in the 1960s so UK manufacturing still had British homes (dimensions and culture) in mind,” says Heath.

Watch the programme on ITV1 on 29th November at 8pm to find out more.

Tonight, ITV1, 29th November at 8pm