Fire & Water/sustainable design

Environmentally sustainable product design and sustainable business practices are fundamental to Fire & Water. While it is difficult for a small company to undertake far-reaching research and development, we endeavor to constantly improve the environmental aspects of our existing products; to design new, more sustainable products; to use cutting edge energy saving technology; and to utilize wherever possible sustainable practices within our office and shop.

Materials. Most of our newer product lines are designed around sustainable and/or recycled materials. A favorite of ours, incorporated in many of our designs, is a biocomposite made of recycled newsprint and soy flour. One of our product series extensively uses custom recycled glass, another recycled plastic. Much of the metals utilized are scrap or cutoffs from salvage shops and other metal shops (cleaned and looking new, of course).

Finishes. Almost all of our finishes are now water base and/or low VOC. We admit there are a few instances where, due to the limitations of being a small shop, we have to resort to standard (nasty) finishes, but we are close to eliminating the last of them.

Recyclability. Our products are designed to enable simple dismantling at the ends of their lives. The materials are mostly non-complex, meaning they can easily be separated and sorted for reuse. Most methods of attachment between materials are mechanical, which further enables future dismantling.

Energy use. All of our newer lighting designs can utilize dimming fluorescent light sources. Though this limits somewhat our choices of bulbs, we made this decision because we believe that successful light fixtures must be appealing, and dimming is an essential function for high-end lights.

Packaging. Though it is crucial that delicate items such as light fixtures be well protected during shipment, we try to minimize the impact of our packaging. All bubble wrap (a necessary evil) has either recycled content or is reused from incoming packaging. And whenever possible, we are now using biodegradable starch packing peanuts. We also reuse all peanuts and related packaging from incoming parcels. Please try to reuse or recycle the packaging materials when you receive our products. Most local shipping stores will accept bagged peanuts if you can't reuse them yourself.

Office practices. Aside from practicing basic recycling and cutting down on office paper by, for instance, receiving all faxes into our computers rather than fax printers, our major environmental push has involved our catalogs. We now print our catalogs entirely in-house. This enables us to print on demand which means that (A) we can minimize back stock and waste and (B) we can change or add to the catalogs at will without worrying about stock of outdated catalogs. We also have greater control over the paper utilized (all recycled, of course) and the printing process. We use a solid ink color printer which gives us laser quality utilizing waxlike sticks of color inks. These are non-toxic and require minimal packaging, unlike inkjet and laser cartridges.
We are also continuously upgrading our website so that it can, more and more, be used as a substitute for paper catalogs. We urge you to use the site instead of requesting a catalog. Please feel free to download images for presentations. Often, the online images are better than the catalog's.
And we now purchase our energy through ConEd Solutions, which provides a mix of 100% hydro and wind power.