As many hospitality brands dig deep into sustainability initiatives, FF&E is one of many areas under scrutiny.
“We’ve gone from a focus on the upfront aspect of a product life cycle—the materials and the avoidance of known chemicals of concern—to an evaluation of sustainability performance throughout the entire lifecycle,” says JoAnna Abrams, CEO of MindClick, a data platform that aggregates sustainability information on thousands of hospitality products and rates them. “It’s equally important to know how that product is packaged, what you can do with the product at the end of its use, and what’s happening in the factories globally.”
Research from the Carbon Leadership Forum and Seattle-based LMN Architects has demonstrated that multiple interior renovations have an enormous impact on carbon emissions, at least equal to those associated with the structure and envelope of the building. That’s a particularly tricky issue for the hospitality sector, where more frequent design refreshes and renovations to serve guests’ evolving needs are often built into the brand promise.
Material matters
The Clear Coil Collection from LightArt uses molecular recycling technology to upcycle discarded elements into light fixtures
Manufacturers continue to develop and incorporate materials that are safer and more planet-friendly, working to eliminate chemicals of concern (such as PFAS, flame retardants, and phthalates) and introduce greener product lines.
Recycled plastics, FSC-certified wood, and bio-based content are showing up more often in FF&E collections.
Recent innovations include Ultrafabrics’ Volar Bio, a textile line that offers a 66 percent mix of recycled, renewable, and bio-based materials, including a petroleum-free resin derived from regeneratively farmed U.S. corn.
The Clear Coil Collection from LightArt, meanwhile, uses molecular recycling technology to upcycle discarded elements—from clothing and carpet fibers to packaging and dense plastic containers—into light fixtures.
The wallcovering industry is also on board. “For years, the wallcovering industry has worked to clean up its act in terms of the chemistry of the product,” says Giselle Walsh, technical/sustainability director for the Wallcoverings Association (WA). “Stabilizers, additives, fire retardants, mold and mildew inhibitors—they’ve all been changed to a cleaner chemistry.”
Greener, but still durable, alternatives to traditional vinyl include Len-Tex’s Clean Vinyl Technology wallcoverings (free of phthalates, heavy metals, formaldehyde, and phenol), which can contribute to LEED v4 credits.
Circular reasoning
The Moth Effect collection from Tarkett Hospitality uses 41 percent post-consumer recycled PVB from car windshields and architectural glass from buildings to create the ethos modular carpet backing
When it comes to managing products’ full life cycle and reducing their carbon footprint, FF&E manufacturers have approached the issues from a variety of angles.
BermanFalk has pivoted away from using EPS foam (a.k.a. Styrofoam) in its furniture packaging, switching to honeycomb cardboard instead, while Tarkett recently announced a partnership with biotech startup Mycocycle to support research and development around mycelia, the root structure of mushrooms, which has been shown to consume and eliminate toxins from construction waste.
These efforts join other big initiatives that continue to move the needle in the right direction. “It’s fantastic to see what manufacturers are already doing,” Abrams says, “whether it’s their use of renewable energy, their conservation of water and reuse in the manufacturing process, or the innovation in terms of how products are designed for disassembly or reuse.”
Some companies’ efforts to recycle their products post-use, however, have proved challenging. “The technology exists to recycle wallcoverings,” says Walsh. “The will exists from the manufacturers and the [renovating] properties. But there’s a disconnect at the project level: We’ve had so much trouble getting the product back.”
Improper collection of the removed materials is a big culprit, Walsh says, which is why WA is hoping to develop a pilot program with a major hospitality brand to create new specs and procedures. But another hitch, according to Steve Kooy, director of health and sustainability for the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA), is the shift in stakeholders from point of purchase to end of use.
“They buy the furniture, but then all parties—the designer, the owner’s rep, and the manufacturer—move on to the next project,” he says. “Who’s going to pick things up five or 10 years from now, when the product needs to be disposed of?”
Kooy adds that product passports (the inclusion of, say, a QR code with information on a particular product’s composition, origin, and life cycle) are becoming more popular, which is a good start. “So when all the parties disperse and others come back later, they’ll actually know what they have. Of course, then they have to figure out who’s going to accept that material. But at least the groundwork is being laid.”
Documentation and transparency
Volar Bio from Ultrafabrics flaunts 66 percent sustainable elements, including certified REPREVE polyester and ECOVERO viscose in the backcloth and Susterra propanediol bio-based resin
By producing their own environmental product declarations (EPDs), earning certification from well-respected programs (Cradle to Cradle, BIFMA’s LEVEL, Greenguard, and Living Product Challenge, to name a few), or both, manufacturers can spell out a product’s sustainable attributes and demonstrate stewardship.
It’s not a perfect system; for one thing, the costs and time commitment to get certified can be out of reach for smaller companies that might otherwise be on the cutting edge. And there’s no universal language for deciphering all the data.
Third-party analytics services like MindClick are gaining traction as a way for designers to make sense of it all and find some basis for comparison. Using a documents-first auditing approach, MindClick determines a good/better/best rating for each product based on data pulled from the product’s certifications and third-party testing and verified by declaration letters signed by the manufacturer’s leadership. Products are evaluated based on their contribution to carbon emission reduction, circularity and waste reduction, healthy interiors, and social responsibility.
The goal, Abrams says, is for designers to think ahead when selecting products. “They’re not just thinking about this new-build hotel or renovation,” she says. “They’re thinking about what the next owner is going to need, and they’re thinking about the overall sustainability performance of that hotel.”
