As a family-owned and operated company, the Furniture Mart strives to grow in and with the communities our stores call home. These communities not only include the people who live in them, but the environment surrounding them. Providing quality furniture while also remaining environmentally vigilant is extremely important to the Furniture Mart, which is why finding innovative ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle materials is a top priority. Working with environmentally friendly vendors, recycling Styrofoam, and increasing fuel efficiency in delivery trucks are just a few Furniture Mart highlights that will be shared in this blog.
Vendor Spotlight
The Furniture Mart works with several environmentally friendly and conscious vendors who make great efforts to produce quality furniture with care. Here’s a quick peek at two of our most popular vendors!
Styrofoam Recycling
Recycling Styrofoam is a newer but highly effective efficiency project for the Furniture Mart. All Styrofoam used by the Furniture Mart is shipped to one distribution center in Minnesota, which has a Styrofoam Densifier provided by RecycleTech. This machine crushes and shreds the Styrofoam into tiny pieces, and then heats up the shredded material. The melted material is called ‘ingot’, which is just 1/90th the size of regular Styrofoam. This ‘ingot’ is used to make numerous recycled products, and because of that, preventing the Styrofoam from ever reaching a landfill. Before the Styrofoam Densifier was used, the Furniture Mart discarded over 35,000 cubic pounds of Styrofoam every week. As of right now, only 15,000 pounds of Styrofoam is discarded, meaning that 20,000 pounds is saved every week! That means over 1 million pounds is saved every year! This process of recycling and reusing Styrofoam is quick, safe, and produces a massive amount of ‘ingot’ to be used for other recycled products.
Fuel Efficiency
All Furniture Mart delivery trucks have a ‘bubble’ mounted on the front of the truck box, directly above the driver. These bubbles, also called Nose Cones®, steer wind to flow around the truck box, managing airflow, and maximizing fuel economy. The Nose Cones® also reduce tire wear, improves lane trucking, and increases power when driving up hills.
Along with the Nose Cones®, daily inspections are also conducted on each vehicle for best performance, checking tire pressure, oil, and seeing to other truck maintenance. Furniture Mart trucks are used in a four-year cycle, and after the four years are sold to local businesses to help shrink the overall carbon footprint.
These are just a few examples of how the Furniture Mart continues to ‘go green’. With new breakthroughs on reducing, reusing, and recycling materials happening constantly, the Furniture Mart aims to remain environmentally sustainable and eco-conscious with each and every product we use. Stay green!
