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A New Room for an Inspirational Blogger

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design, Sustainability Tagged with , , , March 29th, 2010 @ 5:37 pm

If you are a green interior design enthusiast, you have probably stumbled upon a blog called Green Your Decor.   Recently I was visiting the GYD site and came across founder and primary blogger Jennae’s very personal piece about her four year old daughter’s heartbreaking battle with leukemia.  In the article, Jennae touches on the difficulties that come along with battling a  serious disease and the tremendous strength that her beautiful daughter Ja’Naya has exerted to overcome it.

Ja’Naya is now in remission, and Jennae and her family are celebrating the good news, however, they are still moving closer to Ja’Naya’s doctors.  Uprooting your home is difficult under any circumstance, and since Ja’Naya will be spending much of her time home recovering, Jennae decided to make the most of a tough situation by surprising her daughter with a beautiful, positive and (of course!) sustainable new bedroom.

Jennae put a lot of time and effort into planning Ja’Naya’s new sanctuary and knew that she wanted a colorful, uplifting wool rug.  After doing some research, she was particularly attracted to Merida’s Letter Lines wool kids area rug in Marker because of the fun vintage chic look, and also because she felt comfortable with the natural wool rug fibers and the socially responsible choices that were made to craft the area rug.  When approached to contribute a Letter Lines kids wool area rug to Ja’Naya’s new room, Merida Home gladly accepted and we are proud to be involved in such an inspiring project.

We can’t wait to read about Ja’Naya’s reaction to her new room (how could she not love it?!) and see photos documenting how the room turns out!  To read about the design and see mock-ups of Ja’Naya’s room design, click here.

Fun Friday Find: Mod Green Pod

By Whitney Filed in Fun Friday Finds, General, Interior Design, Sustainability Tagged with , , , March 26th, 2010 @ 12:02 pm

Hi, I’m Whitney, the online marketing specialist here at Merida Home.  As the online marketing specialist, part of my job entails searching the web to find like-minded businesses that share our passion for design and sustainability.  We hope to connect with and support these companies and we hope they connect with and support us too.  In my searching I’ve come across some really great sites that I want to share with you, so I am starting a “Fun Friday Find” that will feature the most interesting site of the week. Without further ado, this week’s first-ever Fun Friday Find is the Mod Green Pod website.

I have known about Mod Green Pod for a while since I had the pleasure of working alongside Lisa in her Boston studio space a few years ago.  I love the fun whimsical fabric and wallpaper prints, but am really inspired by Mod Green Pod’s emphasis on sustainability and dedication to creating local jobs here in the US.  After seeing Mod Green Pod featured in the Urban Sherp newsletter, I decided to check out their site and see what Lisa and the gals have been up to.  That’s when I found their Room Creator…..

The Room Creator features a traditional living room set-up with basic white chairs, a couch, a lamp and curtains.  The room looks pretty drab – but here comes the fun part!  You can drag Mod Green Pod’s wallpaper prints onto the walls and use their fabric to upholster the furniture.  Watch the room come together and get inspired to take some design risks with your own décor!  Don’t like what you create?  Refresh the page and try again.

Hint, you can even decorate the family cat…

Living Room Before Transformation

Living Room Before Transformation

Living Room After Transformation

Living Room After Transformation

Now all this room needs is a matching Merida Home Pavo Thrive Lagoon wool area rug to tie the flooring into the lovely blue color scheme…..

Think you can design a better room?  Send us a screen shot of your favorite design!

Employee Spotlight: Sustainability Director

By Cameron Filed in General, Sustainability Tagged with , March 26th, 2010 @ 7:54 am
So how does a company go about becoming sustainable? What exactly does “being sustainable” entail, and whose job is it to coordinate all of these efforts?

Well, at Merida its Zairo Cheibub, Sustainability Director. Zairo travels the world to make sure all aspects of the Merida rug supply chain are both socially and environmentally responsible. Recently I was able to ask Zairo for a few more details on his job and his role at Merida.

Me: What initially sparked your interest in sustainability?

Z: Having grown up in Brazil which has serious issues of social inequality and poverty, I have always been very concerned about  social justice and economic development. I’ve always wanted to make a difference in these areas, and this was the main motivation for my first professional career as a political scientist/sociologist. In 1992, Rio de Janeiro, my home town, hosted the first Earth Summit with more than 100 heads of states. It was a big event! I immersed myself in the discussions and events of the Earth Summit and was truly struck by the dimension of the environmental issues the earth faced. It was a huge wake up call for me. Later on, during the Sloan Fellows Program at  MIT, I as able to integrate and articulate the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability in a coherent and systematic way.

Me: Why were you drawn to work at Merida?

Z: I took a class at MIT Sloan called Sustainable Business Laboratory (S-Lab) that required that a team of students worked with a company on a sustainability related project. Merida applied to get a student team for a project and my team chose to work with the company. During the work for this project I got to know Merida’s product, processes and people quite well. I was very impressed with the sustainability of Merida’s products, with the partnership the company established in developing countries and the commitment the company had with becoming increasingly more and more sustainable in all aspects. The people at Merida were nice and the work climate was very good… I thought it would be a fun company to work for and I was right!!

Me: Why does Merida Meridian need a Sustainability Director?

Z: Sustainability should be understood as a process and not as a defined, one time result. It is also multidimensional  as it implies a diversity of social, environmental and economic issues. Companies have to constantly strive to make their products more and more sustainable was well was to improve their operations, reduce their energy and material consumption, assure supplier’s compliance with standards and values, etc.  My role at Merida is to coordinate all the different actions directed toward making the company more and more sustainable as well as to make sure that the process is advancing.

Me: What are some current initiatives you are working on at Merida?

Z: The three main initiatives currently are:  working with the Sustainable Business Leadership Program to make our operations even more sustainable; putting together a Life Cycle Assessment project for Merida’s main products; working with our smaller suppliers to help them make their operations more sustainable.

To read more about Zairo and what he has been up to at Merida and at MIT, visit Merida’s Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Blog: http://www.insidesustainabledesign.com/ (Zairo is the main contributor to the blog).

Vintage Travel Posters

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design Tagged with , March 25th, 2010 @ 11:09 am

My apartment is a constant work in process. I just moved in October, and while my roommate and I have the kitchen and living room pretty well set, there is one room that needs some serious work: my room. I have all of the furniture I need, but the walls are still completely blank. I still have all of my silly trite wall posters that I had in college, but I’m ready to move on from my Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe portraits. I want to do something a little more grown up, but still fun.

I do, however, have one wall poster that I absolutely love: a vintage travel poster. I love the colorful bold graphics of these types of posters and I have decided to look for a couple more to get framed for my room.


There are hundreds and hundreds of these posters that can be easily found and ordered online. http://www.art.com, http://www.allposters.com, and http://www.zazzle.com, have particularly large selections of vintage travel posters. That way you can pick and choose posters by color theme, location, or artist. Since my room is already a potpourri of colors, I’m choosing posters based on the location they are advertising and am picking only places that I’ve been (not necessarily the ones pictured in this article).

The original prints are more rare and expensive because they are collectors’ items and considered authentic and beautiful works of art. Originals can be found in high art museums such as the Louvre, the Met, and even the Library of Congress.

As always, when considering colors for your own rooms you can use Merida Home’s Area Rug by Color Search!

Paint: The Good and the Bad

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design, Sustainability Tagged with , , March 25th, 2010 @ 10:59 am

At this point most of us know that some paints can give off harmful chemicals, and you may know that you should look for interior paints with Low-VOCs or No VOCs. But what exactly are VOCs and what potential harm do they pose?

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound. VOCs can include a variety of chemicals that are emitted as gases from either a solid or a liquid. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to VOCs can cause headaches, nose and throat irritation, skin allergies, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and some VOCs are potentially carcinogenic. Yikes!

VOCs are a large contributing factor to indoor air pollution, which in turn, is a hazard to human health.

The scary thing about VOCs is that they are emitted from a variety of common household items like paint, lacquer. paint strippers, wood preservatives, household cleansers and disinfectants, and even dry-cleaned clothing.

Levels of VOCs are usually 2 – 5 times higher indoors than outdoors.  When painting, the level can be as high as 1000 x higher than outdoor air. Even when dry, interior paint can emit VOCs for years after it is applied! This means that you are possibly being exposed in almost any building interior.

However, these days there are many low or no VOC paint options on the market so it is much safer to paint the interior of your home. Another benefit of these new paints are that they are almost orderless- which makes do-it-yourself remodeling much more pleasant!

Color Wheel in Interior Design

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design Tagged with , , , , March 25th, 2010 @ 10:53 am

In order to design a cohesive and intriguing room, color combinations may be the most important element. A good understanding of how colors interact with each other is a great way to start when re-doing a room. So it is essential to have a good understanding of the color wheel.

Color Wheel Basics: There are three colors of which all other colors are made. These are called primary colors and include: red, yellow, and blue. Secondary colors are created when equal parts of any two primary colors are mixed. These are purple, orange, and green. When any primary and secondary color are mixed they create tertiary colors. Absence of a color is black.

Tints are pure colors mixed with varying amounts of white, while tones are colors mixed with grey or black.

Red, yellow and orange are warm colors and blue, purple, and green are cool colors. Warm and cool colors bring out different moods, so ask yourself what the intention of the room is and what hues suit the use of the room.

In the end though, color choices are mostly about personal taste and sense of style. To help you explore your own style concepts, Merida Home allows you to search for area rugs by warm, cool, dark, multi-colored and neutral colors.

The results show the primary rug photo for the rug so keep in mind that if it looks like it doesn’t belong in the search results, its does, its just that that rug has the desired color options. So for example if you search for “warm colors” and get a photo of a blue rug, that just means the rug also comes in warm colors if you actually click the image and review the product!

Click here to try some colored area rug searches now!

Not Just for Sweaters

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design, Sustainability Tagged with , , March 19th, 2010 @ 7:33 am

The first rugs ever made were most likely of sheep’s wool between 3-5 BCE in Central Asia. Many different types of rugs have been woven out of wool all over the world in the following centuries. Rugs are often still made from wool these days, but not all of them are environmentally friendly because the wool is often woven in combination with synthetic fibers. These fibers can be made out of materials that don’t biodegrade or even fibers derived from non-renewable resources. However, wool on its own is a durable yet biodegradable material. Wool, since it comes from animals, is somewhat more expensive than other fibers, which is why it is often blended or woven with another material to help bring down the cost. However, Merida has both pure wool rugs and wool rugs that are blended with other sustainable materials like paper and sisal.

Merida’s wool rugs are made from New Zealand wool. New Zealand is one of the world’s largest wool exporters, and sheep herding is an asset to the culture there. The peak of wool production was in the mid 1980’s, but continues to be a vital part of the economy in New Zealand. New Zealand is a largely rural country and is dedicated to environmental sustainability. The wool industry, following suit, is constantly working to become as sustainable as possible. Which means you can feel confident when walking on your wool Merida rug that you have something beautiful, sustainable, and socially responsible.

Composting with Style

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design, Sustainability Tagged with , , March 15th, 2010 @ 11:58 am

Its no secret that composting can be a dirty, stinky business, but the truth is that it doesn’t have to be. Composting allows people to take recycling to a whole new level – recycling food to become rich soil to be used in gardening or to simply return to the earth! However, many people, even avid gardeners, sometimes shy away from composting because the idea of keeping rotting food around is, well, gross. However, if properly done, composting won’t smell and can even be stylish. The key is to have a large outdoor bin or pile if possible, so that the decomposing food won’t taint the smell of your living space. Inside, keep a small fashionable compost bin to periodically be emptied into your larger outdoor bin.
These small indoor composting pots can even add a little something to your decor. Check out these stylish composting pots I found:

With these pots, composting quickly goes from yucky to fabulous!

For those of you who are new to composting, here are a few quick tips:
-Never put meat or dairy in compost.
-Add leaves and yard scraps to your outdoor bin or pile.
-Coffee grounds and filters can be composted, tea bags too!
-Shredded paper and cardboard can be added as well
-Occasionally turn your pile or mix your bin

For more about composting and for a more complete guide on how to start composting at your home, check out these blogs: http://blog.composters.com/
http://www.thecompostbin.com/

Trashion

By Cameron Filed in Sustainability Tagged with , , March 11th, 2010 @ 3:34 pm

Trash Fasion!

On the west coast of Africa in Accra, Ghana, 85% of the city’s waste is old discarded plastic bags and sachets. Water and frozen treats are sold in small plastic bags on the city streets, but the city does not have very extensive trash collection and recycling infrastructure so most of these bags end up as litter. But, there is one group that is trying to turn this trash into treasure. Trashy Bags is an NGO (non-governmental organization) that hires people to collect plastic off the streets, clean it, and then sew it or weave it into messenger bags, totes, duffel bags, and more. These items are then sold to consumers for around $12 each. Trashy Bags is hoping to expand their consumer base and eventually export them to sell in stores around the world like Trader Joe’s and Wholefoods in the United States. So far the project has been successful – the group has pulled approximately 10 million plastic sachets off the streets of Accra, and has helped employ about a hundred people, many of whom would not be able to find work in the city otherwise.


Trashy Bags also uses their products to educate people of the dangers of littering and pollution. Along with each bag they sell comes an informative brochure about the trash problem in Ghana. This brochure includes eye-opening statistics like: in Accra 60 tons of waste is produced from plastic products each day, yet only 2% of this plastic is recycled. Organizations like trashy bags are slowly changing these statistics, and I for one am excited to one day purchase a trashy bag for myself!

http://www.trashybags.org/
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/ghana/100225/ghana-trash-fashion

5 Easy Ways to Reuse Glass Bottles

By Cameron Filed in Interior Design, Sustainability Tagged with , , March 7th, 2010 @ 11:58 am
1. Create an easy, casual yet delicate tulip vase
Its just about spring which means flowers flowers and flowers! Old wine or liquor bottles are great flower vases because they are long and can prop up a droopy flower for longer. For example, I received a beautiful bouquet of tulips for Valentines Day a couple of weeks ago, and they are just starting to sag. I picked the droopiest flowers out of the bouquet and put one or two flowers in various old wine bottles around my apartment. They no longer look droopy, and the bottles add an elegant (and green) surprise to our decor.
2. Candle holder.
If you have skinny candles, they can fit right into the top of a wine bottle, which create the perfect impromptu candle holders. They can also be quite pretty if you peel all the labels off the bottles. Since wine bottles come in all different shapes and colors, you can create your own arrangement to suite your style.
3. Piggy Bank/Motivation Bottle.
I recently came across a neat idea in Shape Magazine, every time you go to the gym, stuff a dollar in an empty bottle. Like many, I struggle to get myself to go to the gym, but if I can save money by going to the gym it helps create that extra incentive I need. Then, hey, if you go to the gym everyday for a month, you can (safely) cut or break open your bottle and you have $30 to spend on a new, smaller, pair of jeans! Nice!
4. Water Carafe.
Bring a little European style home by cleaning out and peeling the labels off an old wine bottle and using it as a water carafe. I can just picture it – white table cloth, soft candlelight, and a green glass bottle as the water carafe – how Parisian!
5. Spice your own Olive oil.
Clean out a an old wine bottle, but keep the cork. Sprinkle in some of your favorite dried herbs and then fill the bottle with olive oil. The herbs will infuse the oil with flavor over time and add a new delicious taste to your cooking. One important thing to remember is that you should always use DRIED herbs or peppers because anything with traces of water in it could grow bacteria in the oil over time. If you do want to use lemon peel or fresh garlic, or other things that may have traces of water, you have to make sure that you refrigerate it.
Voila, 5 new ways to reduce, REUSE, and recycle!
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