Kia Designs starting to be a Carbon Neutral Business

Here at Kia Designs we like to carbon offset our yearly contributions and invest in environmental projects in the UK. We try to keep as paperless an office as possible, and keep our printing output low.

Interior Design isn’t the cleanest industry, we use lots of cotton (particularly in carpets and curtains) which is one of the most damaging crops on the planet. Fire regulations mean we coat a lot of products is some serious chemicals. We fly all over the world to attend trade shows. Then there’s the footprint for shipping furniture around the world, which is always very convoluted. A cane chair might be constructed in a village in Vietnam. Then coated with a varnish that has been made in China, shipped to the US and then sent back to factories in Asia. The chair might then be sent on to a wholesaler in China, bought by an American firm and shipped to their warehouse in Texas where it will be bought by a retailer, who truck it to their company. From there they send it to one of their international stores, say London, where we purchase it and send it to Dubai for a client. It’s more well travelled than your average yuppie.

Our office, WeWork, is very good at keeping track of our carbon footprint as a building. We have access to printing and building reports, such as the one below:

So we know how much we’re churning out and can counter it. This year we have purchased a tree through Carbon Footprint Ltd, who provide trees all over the UK. And we’ll continue to buy one each year to make sure we’re always compensating for our impact. We also use recycling when ever possible – both in the office and with the building materials and furniture we use. We source from the UK whenever possible and we always favour green businesses. We also calculate how much we need to offset with our commute to work and any work trips we take throughout the year.

We haven’t yet done a completely “green” project, but it’s an area we’d love to explore more, so if you or anyone you know has an upcoming project with a green agenda, we’d love to hear about it!