I'm guessing that when people think of green they're not thinking about real wood furniture, tile, bamboo flooring, stainless steel or a really nice and durable fabric. But these things are more green than throw away MDF furniture or a plastic whatever doodad because of the longevity of the materials.

Quality that lasts forever helps the environment because once you have it you don't have to replace it. If you ever do replace it, it's still in good enough condition that you can pass it on to someone other than the garbage collector who'll pick it up at your curbside and haul it to the landfill.

I've actually built many pieces of my own furniture or have restored and given new life to something that's been forgotten. These pieces will probably last longer than me and will still be useful to someone that wants them after I don't need them anymore. I build my own stuff because I enjoy it, and I know it's going to be the quality and design that I want.

The conversion of an old sewing machine stand into a cute table that my wife uses was one of the easiest furniture projects I've done. I bought the base of the project as a steel frame that was all rusty and even bent in some areas. I cleaned up the rust and gave the steel a coat of paint before I built a new wooden top for it and added a shelf in the center. The whole project took me two weeks of my free time from start to finish. I was able to recycle something that was already older than me and add to it so that it'll be beautiful for even that much longer.

Since I'm using real wood and not MDF I can compost all the wood shavings and dust I create during the project or use it as mulch around the base of my trees to help me conserve water and I don't have to worry about any glues poisoning my plants.

I'm sure that not everybody out there is able to build their own stuff or has access to the right tools to do so but still I wonder if there's really people out there that just have to have all this plastic garbage. Do they really fall in love with that flimsy plastic shelving unit that's going to last just a few years before it can't even hold itself up anymore?

Being Green also comes with the responsibility of thinking about what you're buying and staying away from the stuff that could've been sent to the landfill the minute it left the checkout line.