Recently my old friend Kate Stone sent me a New Year's greeting with some family photos and updates. One of those updates was that she and her husband, Chris Foss, had just purchased some furniture that they thought I'd really like from a little company in Santa Rosa, California called Bevara Design House. "Chris and I are buying a cabinet from the Hide Collection," Kate explained.

"Bevara have some modern pieces as well as several projects utilizing scrap. And the owners are really interesting. You should check 'em out." So I did. And I was indeed intrigued by what I saw, particularly a section on their site simply called "Sustainability."

This little guide consists of over 60 entries and should help you keep things straight in the most elementary manners of environmental friendliness. It's already saved me many-a minute of Google search time. There's also lots of other great stuff on Bevera's site worth checking out, particularly if you're looking for some furniture.

I was interested in a ton of their pieces so I dropped the owners, Erik and Stacy Jorgensen a line. I got a quick response back from Erik, who it turns out I know fairly well as we played in the same baseball league when I lived in San Francisco. Nice! Erik let me know that Stacy would be in touch soon with more information about some of their more interesting projects focused on sustainable design.

"Hi Andrew," Stacy wrote. "We have been doing a few fun things recently with recycled materials. Our latest addition is a series of laser cut-scrap industrial metal furniture. The metal is off-cast from the manufacturer of Nascar chassis parts, John Deere tractor replacement parts, or tractor tube housing. We then use the scrap material and turn it into furniture. Some of it is inlaid, other is powder-coated or finished in rust or gunmental. These are all made here in the States.

"We also make our case goods in reclaimed or rediscovered wood. The line is locally manufactured in Oakland and made of wood harvested from the Sacramento Delta. The oak trees were initially planted to ostensibly stabilize and reinforce the levees naturally with their roots system, however eventual root death caused water channels which in fact had a deleterious effect on the strength of the levees. The trees were eventually chopped down and labeled 'rediscovered' for this reason. These pieces are currently being sold at ABC Carpet and Home in New York.

From Bevara's Skin Collecttion. "With its distinctive stripe appearance, SKIN is our made-to-order line of tables and benches. Each piece is custom built to your requirements. SKIN pushes sustainability to a new level by utilizing post recycled, post consumer wood, including wood skins that usually end up in landfills. The skin is the weather exposed wood that is shaved off the plank to reach pristine timber for hardwood flooring. SKIN is built locally in the Bay Area and designed to last."

"And we are now in the throes of developing/fiddling/weaving a line of fabric made out of old t-shirts, rags, and old jeans. We have no idea if this will be a viable project, but it looks pretty cool. Our eventual hope would be to have the product manufactured as a social design project, though this is still a bit far off..."

You never know what you'll find from a simple New Year's greeting. Now I hope to never forget my environmental ABCs and to check out that line made from old shirts and jeans. Oh yeah, and to ask more questions about what my teammates and opponents on the baseball diamond do for a living!

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