The first time I heard
about Q Collection - A mission-based business
creating the healthiest, most environmentally-friendly home furnishings
credited with being one of
the very first to design for sustainability in home furnishings
- was about four years ago. I was producing an environmentally
conscious lifestyle TV show and Q Collection was featured on the show. I was immediately
impressed with their aesthetic. Beautiful, well made sustainable pieces of
furniture and textiles. The showroom looked like a page from Metropolitan Home.
Everything was perfectly placed. What impressed me the most were their
textiles: A gorgeous colour palette of Eco-friendly fabrics in stunning hues.
And of course, all their furniture uses FSC wood, non-formaldehyde glues made in
non-harmful or toxic working conditions.
Co-founders Jesse
Johnson and Anthony Cochran told me a story about cotton fields. They said the
perfect looking cotton field has pristine crops. Not a sound can be beard. Whereas an unruly field is noisy, the buzzing and humming sounds of insects and birds are a constant. This is the
organic crop. A haphazard majesty where workers wander around picking freely. The perfect looking crop is not organic
cotton and you can't hear any living creatures because they've all been
killed by the toxic pesticides sprayed onto the crop. Cotton pickers usually
wear protective clothing. A striking contrast and something I thought about a
lot. When Jesse revealed
their baby collection to me, which at the time was in development it was
no surprise that their baby bedding would comprise of organic cotton crib sets, pillows and sustainable cribs.
Here Jesse Cochran
tells me more about Q Collection Junior, now in its third year, and the new additions to their collection available this
month. You can purchase a selection of Q Collection Junior at my Haute Mama OpenSky Shop.
HM:
What is Q Collection Junior and when did you launch it?
JJ: Q Collection Junior is our
children’s line of furniture and organic cotton bedding, launched in 2007. We believe it is the healthiest, most
environmentally friendly collection available, or is as we say – PEOPLE
SAFE. PLANET SAFE. Our cribs were the first to go through
rigorous 3rd party material testing and certification and we remain
the only collection endorsed by the leading non profit focused on children’s
environmental health – Healthy Child, Healthy World The furniture collection includes
cribs (all of which convert to toddler beds), changing tables, dressers,
stackable storage, a glider & ottoman. The bedding collection includes crib sets (with reversible
bumpers and skirts), pillows and individual sheets. Some of which you can buy from me!
HM: Why did you decide to introduce a nursery collection?
JJ: The idea for Q Collection Junior
came to us in early 2006 from two sources. First, given our unique focus on removing toxic and
potentially toxic materials, we continually had customers of our adult line
asking if we designed for children. Second, I was in the process myself of
having a child. Having spent so
much time learning what materials are typically used in furniture construction,
I was really shocked to find that in children’s furniture more consideration
wasn’t given to the use of materials that had been proven to be safe. It seemed like an obvious next step for
us.
HM: Q Collection Junior has
beautiful well priced organic cotton bedding separates as well as a lovely line
of full sets. Why organic cotton and not bamboo?
JJ: The main reason we started with
certified organic cotton is because we believe it offers the most transparency
on use of the healthiest materials with the highest level of quality. The organizations certifying around
cotton are well established and trusted.
A concern remains for us with the use of bamboo in bedding as the
process that takes the bamboo fibers down to yarn often relies on very harsh,
toxic chemicals. We may introduce
bamboo fiber bedding in the future but we will need to gain greater trust in
the processing.
HM: What are your furniture pieces made from? Is the wood FSC
and are your finishes non toxic. Please expand on the paint and glues/joinery.
JJ: All of our materials go through a
three step review process, including:
- Filtering
all materials though a list of 1,000 chemicals on our banned list. If it is present, it is rejected.
-
External
review by one of our PhD advisory trustees. They are able to provide a much more detailed understanding
of the health and environmental profile of a specific material.
- Any
material that makes it through those first two steps, becomes part of our 3rd
party indoor air quality testing process.
This involves producing a piece of furniture and testing it for 72 hours
in a sealed chamber, measuring down to the parts per billion what chemicals are
present. Only if it passes the
tests, does it then become an approved material for Q Collection Junior.
Specifically, we use both FSC and SFI certified wood. In addition, we source all of our wood
from within 150 miles of our production locations, all of which are based in
USA.
On finishes & paints, our starting point is to only use
water-based materials. We then
look at every specific chemical in the finish and put it through our 3 step
process detailed above. On glues,
we only use water-based glues that have also gone through the 3 step process
above. The end result is that all
of our materials, including our finishes and glues, have been certified to be
free of VOC health concerns.
HM: What new this year for Q Collection Junior? Will you
expand to include a children’s collection?
JJ: We will be introducing a new collection of organic cotton
bedding in May. It will include
two new crib sets and several new sheet styles. In addition, it will be the first time we have offered our
bedding for twin mattresses. We'll also be introducing a new collection of
furniture in the early fall. We
are still finalizing the selection but it will likely include new categories
for us including a bassinet and several items for older children including a
twin bed.
HM: Is there anything else you might like to add?
JJ: The main thing that sets Q Collection Junior apart is that
we were founded on the mission to provide the healthiest, most environmentally
friendly children’s home furnishings.
It wasn’t an add-on later.
In an era when ‘greenwashing’ has sadly become very common, we know that
it is not enough to just claim that our designs are the healthiest. We need to back that up with rigorous,
independent, 3rd party testing. The result is that we were the very first children’s
furniture collection to test and certify our cribs with Greenguard. And, we remain the only company
with a completely certified nursery collection – including crib and changing
table. All of Q Collection Junior's furniture is hand crafted in the USA and available at qcollectionjunior.com
If you are in NYC, you can
see everything in person at Q Collections showroom on 21st & Broadway.
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