Transcription of Indoor Ecosystems at Home & at School #218
Lisa: As a long-time resident of Greater Portland, it’s been exciting for me to see how the Friends School of Portland has evolved over the past several years. Today, I have with me Jenny Rowe, who has been the head of school of the Friends School of Portland since 2012. A practicing Quaker, Jenny firmly believes that we all have something to teach and something to learn. Jenny and her husband live in Munjoy Hill in Portland.
Thanks so much for coming in and talking with me today.
Jenny: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Lisa: This is interesting. We cut your bio down by quite a lot. What it doesn’t reflect is the fact that, before you came to this area, you’ve been in a lot of different places pursuing work in the educational field.
Jenny: Yeah, that’s right. I started teaching back in the early ’80s in Putney, Vermont. I’ve been in a lot of schools in New England, and then life took me to Central America, to Guatemala, for a part of a year, and then we made our home in Monteverde, Costa Rica, for about 10 years. That’s where my kids went to school. That was the first experience as being a head of school of a Quaker school.
Lisa: Your children are 26 and 24?
Jenny: Good. Yes.
Lisa: Now, what you’ve told me is one is in the Netherlands and one is at NYU, just started law school.
Jenny: Right.
Lisa: What type of influence did their time and part of a Quaker school, Quaker educational system, what kind of an influence did that have on their growing up?
Jenny: It’s kind of an interesting mix because Monteverde, Costa Rica, is a very tiny community on the top of a mountain, just below a beautiful cloud forest. When we were there, things were still pretty small. It’s a very attractive place for people who are interested in birds and travel. When we were there, it was quite a bit smaller. The school itself was 90 children.
My kids had about 10 to 15 people in their class, and they knew them extremely well after a number of years, the same kids. They had both the experience of being in a very tight-knit, very small community, but also the experience of traveling back and forth from New Hampshire for us at that time. They’ve really grown to love to travel. My son spent a year in Vietnam. My daughter has worked in Mexico and Costa Rica and Cameroon. They’re traveling all the time. I think they really think of themselves as citizens of the world.
Lisa: Isn’t that one of the things that you’re hoping to do with the Friends School of Portland as really beyond just educating young children to do what one does once you’ve gotten out of middle school and elementary school, but to be a citizen of the world?
Jenny: Yeah, I think we all need to do that. In 2015, we’re really all part of something so much bigger than our own communities, and our communities really need to extend beyond our homes and our schools. You don’t always know what that’s going to look like or how it’s going to look. I think people have to feel very settled and care for and understand where they live when they’re young. Really, their circles need to be quite small. That starts in your family and then maybe your first steps into elementary school and feeling that you’re a part of more than just your classroom, and then to continue outward from there.
Lisa: Tell me how that intersects with being a Quaker and with the Quaker philosophy.
Jenny: I think that most of where you can start when you’re thinking about Quaker practice is to understand that everybody has a spark of the divine in them. Some Quakers say there’s that of God in everybody. If you take that and you just expand out with that, what it means is that you understand that people are equal, you understand that it takes a lot of people in a community to accomplish what needs to be done. You start by assuming that everybody is honest and is willing to work hard to make the world a better place.
That’s what we can help kids to understand. It’s really adults leading to learn how to do that together and then modeling that for kids. You can create quite a nice place where kids have a chance to practice this and take it with them as they go on to their next piece of life.
Lisa: We interviewed Billy Shore who was the head of Share Our Strength for, I guess, it’s national, international, but it’s about feeding children. He sent me several books that were actually written by an educator who has a background as a Quaker. His first name I believe is Parker.
Jenny: Yeah, Parker Palmer.
Lisa: I was really struck by the idea that there wasn’t some external something that was being imposed upon the notion of what one does. It is more about being quite enough to listen to your still, small voice and know what it is that resonates more with you. How does that come through in the work that you do at the Friends School?
Jenny: We definitely need to set aside time for reflection for people. We begin every morning, just for the faculty, we just sit together in our meeting room for 5 minutes in silence and then we get together and think about what the day and the week are going to look like ahead, and then go out from there, so starting with a real quite focus place so that we are ready to meet the challenges of the day.
For the students and for the faculty, we have meeting for worship. It’s a silent meeting on Monday afternoons. We sit together for about 20 or 25 minutes. Sometimes we’ll reflect on a question that somebody’s asked and, if somebody’s moved to say something into the silence, they’re welcome to do that. Sometimes, it’s just a lot of soft fidgets going on when you’re sitting in a group of … in a room with a bunch of kids, which is also fine.
Many teachers use silence in their classrooms just to get started or things need to come back to … If people need to be drawn back to attention, often, people will ask, “Let’s just have a little minute of silence before we go on.” I think kids grow to be pretty comfortable in quiet.
Lisa: It’s also been important for you to create not only an educational environment and a social environment for the children, but truly create sort of an ecosystem of peace. Initially, your school was located on Mackworth Island, which I found very interesting because of its history, the history of Mackworth Island as being a place where deaf children were educated and there being some controversy there about how they were treated. What was that like when you were located there?
Jenny: That happened so early. This was about 10 years ago. I think the school had a strong impulse to begin, and I think it was only fairly at the last minute that they could actually find a site to use as the school. At the beginning of the school, I understand that there was quite a bit more back-and-forth between the students at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf and the Friends School. There were some classes on signing. There were people on the island who could come and teach classes at our school, and then we opened up our PE classes often to the children from the school for the deaf. I think that was a really wonderful start.
When I came in, the population had dropped already so much at the school for the deaf that the interpreters even weren’t on hand to continue that relationship, but we did have PE with our … Our kindergarten class shared PE with some of those children.
The site itself was just a great place for children to be outside and roaming the island and learning about the tides and finding their special places, special beaches and special trees. That was really one of the pieces that we realized we needed to bring with us when our lease expired on Mackworth. We knew that having that connection with nature that meant so much to kids and their families, it was something that we really had to move forth with. That’s what prompted us to buy 21 acres of really beautiful forest in Cumberland right along Route One and then began designing a building around that.
Lisa: It’s interesting. It’s almost an oxymoron to say that you have a beautiful site right along Route One.
Jenny: It’s true.
Lisa: I noticed over time and watching your school being built that your school is … It is sort of nestled back in the trees. There is actually a corridor that extends from Falmouth to Yarmouth where there’s still a lot of nature that exists.
Jenny: There is. There are patches of wood. You know that there are neighborhoods that live behind and things off to the side, but the school itself is located off of Route One, but close enough to Route One that the rest of the forest still there’s no access road that cuts through it. It’s a nice block of forest trails, different types of wetland. It’s a real area of exploration. Kids are starting to do studies in the forest there behind the school.
Lisa: It’s also important to you not only to be situation within a natural space, but also create a space within your building that was conducive to healthy living and learning.
Jenny: That’s right. The building itself is really a special place. We came from a tried-and-true cinder block building on Mackworth that was really hard to keep warm. We’re very glad that we were there, but it really gave us a chance to think about what we needed and what we wanted to … What we wanted to show the rest of the world was possible. We had a terrific building committee, architects and builder. Really, together, we worked the design first a school that would be a great place for kids to learn. The more we thought about it and the more we learned about passive house design and having people in our community who were experienced in that world, we realized we could design a building that would allow us to model what we are … the stewardship that we want to have for the earth.
It’s been a really fantastic process. It was a fantastic process to go through. The school itself is net zero. It has an incredibly great insulation and light and space and warmth and, actually, cool. When the school year started, it was quite hot. Some schools were closed because of heat even in Maine. We found that a really comfortable place to be. It’s a simple building. It costs a little bit more to do it this way. Knowing that we were aiming for from the beginning really helped us to know how to do this.
Lisa: How many children and teachers do you have?
Jenny: We have about a hundred kids this year, and we have about 25 faculty and staff, about 9 full-time people and a lot of people that come in to do smaller pieces.
Lisa: When you were looking to build in Cumberland, how did you get information from students and parents and teachers and community about what would best suit the needs of all?
Jenny: That’s a great question. We held some community meetings, we held some parent meetings at the very beginning to, because we could … Really, we thought we could go in so many different directions. We looked at empty lots in downtown Portland. We looked at schools that had been abandoned and could be renovated. It was not necessarily that easy. There were some parents who felt like it was very far… We all would have liked to be closer to Portland in order for things not to feel like they could become … We didn’t want to become a kind of a suburban country day school. We wanted people to be able to continue having projects that they could help with in Portland.
In the end, we really were limited in what we could find. Getting together with parents to talk about those decisions and also then helping … They helped us to think about who was it that we are as a school, what’s important to us now that we are not, at that point, we were 7 years old, and what makes us who we are, and then that connection with the natural world really came through in the meetings that we had. Then we invited a larger community into meetings to talk about the early designs of the school and got some feedback there and got people excited to join with us to get the building built. We did start out with a lot of meetings.
Lisa: That is an interesting question, and that is, if you look at the school as an organism, what is the identity of the organism. It’s like the parable of the people touching the elephant and a guy touches the trunk and he says the elephant looks like this and the guy touches the tail and he says the elephant looks like this. You have a lot of people touching the organism, that is your school.
I know you have this connection with the natural world and the idea of stewardship. What would you consider to be the identity that is commonly accepted?
Jenny: I think students feel that school is a place that feels both comfortable like home, but challenging, that allows them to try different things and to feel safe about that. I think students picture themselves being outdoors even if it’s just at recess. Our littlest, our preschoolers go out, and kindergartens are out for an hour a day. It doesn’t matter what the weather is. Even on the coldest days, they’re out trudging around and finding things and making things. I think that that’s how students often think of themselves when they come to school. They’ve just got a lot of freedom to explore. Even just on the edge of the swing sets, there are some wonderful patches of partridge berry and ferns. They’re spending a lot of time creating little spaces in that early forest.
I think, to other people, it’s a place where Quaker values really are brought to life. I think most of the people who come to the Friends School aren’t Quakers and won’t be Quakers, but they talk about the values of simplicity and peace and integrity, community, equality and then that stewardship piece. It’s really about figuring out how to take care of your community and how to take care of the world and putting your beliefs into practice. It’s really a little about becoming an activist at your level and, if you see something that needs to be changed, being encouraged to have a voice to do that.
Lisa: You’re still called the Friends School of Portland. You’ve said that you have connections to projects in Portland. What types of things are you doing within the greater community?
Jenny: Last week, our 3rd and 4th graders went and did some stenciling of storm drains in Portland. You’ve seen this water flows into Casco Bay. That’s something that we’ve done each year. We’ve invited people from refugee resettlement organizations to come and speak with our older students in the last several years. We’ve had some clothing collection for teens at the teen shelter. That was put together by 2 kindergartners who collected socks and towels for the teens in the teen shelter earlier this year.
We’ve had some of our students go and read to people at retirement communities. We’ve also been able to host parenting for peace events. There are speaker series that we’ve invited educators in the area and parents or people of all … They don’t need to be parents to come. Twice a year, we either had an event at Hannaford Hall, USM or at the school itself to discuss issues that are of importance all the way from gender identity to the importance of allowing kids to be part of nature. I can’t think of anything else, but there are many, a range of topics that are of interest to the larger group of people in this area.
Lisa: Having spent time in New Hampshire and Costa Rica, and I know you’ve lived in other places, what was the draw of Maine for you?
Jenny: It was really the Friends School of Portland. I had been at the Friends School in Monteverde. As I moved back to New Hampshire, I had realized that the school was being … There was a Quaker school that was being established in an island in Maine, and I kind of kept my ears open for that. At this point, we’re the only Friends School in Northern New England. When I heard about the position being opened, I knew it was something that I wanted to find out more about. It’s really not that far from where I had been living. It’s lovely to be living in a city after many, many years. Portland is just the right size for me. In some ways, I feel like I’ve come home again being at the Friends School.
Lisa: You and I have children in their 20s. We’ve both seen how things move along as parents from relative dependence to relative independence. It also affords us as individuals to look at our own lives and see where we’ve moved and how we’ve evolved and how we’ve developed. What have you noticed about your own development as a person?
Jenny: I think that I continue appreciate the people around me quite a bit. I think I’ve realized that there’s such power in community and learning from, paying attention to what students are offering, have to offer, including parents. Especially just trusting and really supporting the faculty to do their best work is pretty much what my life is about. I have a great deal of appreciation for the people around me and kind of an extra large sense of responsibility to make things right for them.
Lisa: That’s a very good answer. I know that it was putting you on the spot a little bit. Sometimes, I think it is really hard to think about even on the spot like, yes, as a person, I’ve evolved just as the students that I’m teaching or, in my case, the patients that I care for have evolved. I think that is sort of the bottom line, isn’t it that we’re all constantly in evolution that hopefully none of us are ever in one place and that’s where we’re going to live and die forever.
Jenny: That’s one of the great things about being at the schools, that nothing stays the same. There are these core values that you hope to bring with you, but you can change traditions. Just the addition of 3 new students or the loss of 3 graduating student, it always means things are fresh in a small school, that individuals can make such a difference.
Lisa: Jenny, how can people find out about the work that’s being done at the Friends School?
Jenny: If you go to the Friends School of Portland’s website, you can find out about the building, you can find out about the staff and you can also find out about admissions open houses. You could come and take a look at the school on those days and see the teachers in their classrooms and just get a sense for what things feel like.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Jenny Rowe, who is the head of school of the Friends School of Portland. She’s been doing this since 2012.
I really appreciate your coming and talking to me today. I completely believe that, as you do, that we all have something to teach and something to learn. I think I’ve learned a lot from you. Thank you.
Jenny: Thank you.
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Lisa: This next topic of conversation is one that I find very important and have been writing about as a doctor and actually dealing with as a doctor as well for really my entire medical career, and that is the ecology of the inner home and how it impacts our health.
My guest today is an individual who knows something about this both personally and professionally. This is Jan Robinson, who is the owner of EcoHome Studio. Jan has been in the interior design business for 25 years. Originally from South Berwick, she now lives in Gorham with her husband. She has 2 grown children.
Thanks so much for coming in today.
Jan: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
Lisa: I’m interested in your own personal story because I think that this dictated really the work that you’re doing now with EcoHome. Tell me a little bit about that.
Jan: It did. I’ve always had allergies. As a child, I remember having headaches and always had sinus infections and ear infections and all of that. As I got older, then I developed asthma. Mostly, it was from environmental things, hay fever and that kind of thing, trees, mold, all of that. When I started building a home in Gorham 18 years ago, I started researching some of the products that you build your house with and what’s in them and decided very quickly that that definitely would have some impact on my asthma. I really wanted to make an effort to have my house be as toxin-free as we could afford it to be, so avoiding particle board, plywood, things that have formaldehyde in them, having solid wood cabinetry, those kinds of things. We put radiant heat in our flooring so that it wasn’t blowing the dust around, those kinds of choices that really have an impact on my asthma. That was sort of the beginning of my journey with finding out what’s in all of those things that we bring into our home.
Lisa: In Maine, it’s especially important because we spend so much time inside with the window shut.
Jan: Our homes are so tight, we have to super insulate our homes to save energy. Especially, the homes today are really, really tight. All of those toxins just build up inside our homes. We’re living with them. We’re breathing them.
Lisa: You also had experienced working as a draper and working in the drapery field.
Jan: Right. Right.
Lisa: This was an early sort of professional understanding that even the fabric that you are handling is causing the problems.
Jan: Absolutely. I started my business as a drapery workroom. I started to realize that the busier I got, the more my fingers and my hands would crack and peel, and that it was really from the chemicals that are used to make textiles. I don’t know what the math is, but it’s a huge amount of chemicals that they use for the dyes and the processing, especially if you get into anything that’s a 100% cotton, which I’ve always been somebody who liked natural fibers.
I always liked to wear cotton. The truth of the matter is cotton is one of the most toxic fibers there is and most devastating to our environment, even organic cotton. A conventional cotton, they use so many pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and water just to grow it and then, once it’s grown, the chemicals they use to process it are just unbelievable. Even if you see something, natural cotton or all-natural cotton product, I would avoid it. Organic cotton is better. It doesn’t have all of those chemicals, but it still uses an awful lot of water to get it to grown, so not the best fiber really. That’s just the beginning of the chemicals that are used to make the textiles that we live with. It’s the dyes. It’s just chromium, all of those kinds of things.
Lisa: It’s interesting. As we’re talking, I’m thinking about this long background that we have here in Maine as factories, as working in factories. My ancestors worked there. I know lots of Mainers have similar stories. Some of the factories were actually related to the garment industry. Some of them were related to the shoe industry, some were paper, but, in each of these, there were processes that were actually damaging to the individuals who were dealing with them.
Jan: Really bad. I grew up South Berwick. We had a shoe factory, and then, in the next town over, there was a tannery, a leather tannery. I remember walking to school every morning past the shoe factory and smelling the glues that they used to make the shoes and thinking, even at a really early age, “This can’t be good. This just can’t be good.” Those people were in there. They did have the windows open pretty much all year round. The workers did, but I can’t even imagine what some of those people were inhaling and how it’s affected or how it affected their health. I mean they closed down, I don’t know, probably in the ’80s or late ’70s. I can’t remember, but all of those things that they inhaled and had to work with day after day, you got to wonder.
Lisa: It’s interesting because, as you were talking, and I’m thinking about your personal, I guess, genetic and health makeup, you are more sensitive to what you are handling, the fabrics. You are also more sensitive to what you were inhaling with your lungs. Not everybody has those sensitivities. They might be exposing themselves to things that they don’t even realize are harming them in the long term.
Jan: I agree. I’m very tuned in to it. I’ve always been somebody who really paid attention to what my body is telling me. When I say that I’m chemically sensitively, I kind of think everybody is, but some people just don’t pay attention to it. For me, when I walk in to, I don’t want to get sued, but some of these home-goods types stores, not HomeGoods the store, but some like a Wal-Mart, I guess, sue me, my nose and my eyes just burn, just burn. A lot of it is the products. I know it’s the products that they’ve got in there that they’re just dumping by the container-full into their stores.
Lisa: We also don’t quite realize that some of the scents that we use to mask chemicals smells are actually themselves harmful.
Jan: Yeah. Yeah, especially with women’s products, perfumes, all of those kinds of things, and then the products we use in our home, Febreze or any of those, the things that you plug in, those are actually harmful chemicals that you really shouldn’t be using. There’s lots of other natural things that you can do. Boils some cinnamon in a pan on your stove or, I don’t know, rub some lemon all over your counters. There’s a lot of other things you can do if you really need to mask scents besides Lysol or any of those type of things.
Lisa: This is something that we’ve been conditioned to expect. The reason that Febreze actually has a scent, my understanding is that, when they introduced a scent-free Febreze, which was used to get rid of odors, people didn’t think it was doing anything. They said, “We need a scent.” We actually, now, are now asking for this.
Jan: Right. Right, and baking soda does just as good a good. Most people keep baking soda in their refrigerator to absorb some of the bad scents. It’s at least much better than any of those things that you spray. Like the areas we’re exposed to so many things that we’re don’t know even know about, why not avoid the things that we do? That kind of have been my approach with my store. If I know some things and if there’s formaldehyde in a piece of furniture, I’m not going to buy it.
Lisa: Jan, tell me about your store and your process when someone comes to your store. It’s called EcoHome, so they have some expectation that you’re doing something that is good for the person and good for the environment. How do people usually find you? What would be the reason for someone to decide to come into your store?
Jan: Unfortunately, a lot of people find me by accident still. People that have chemical-sensitive history or asthma, a lot of the people that come in are coming in. They’re worried about their children. Maybe they have young kids, and the thought of having their child laying on the sofa breathing formaldehyde or fire retardants is of concern to them. What I have in my store isn’t 100% toxin-free. That’s the one thing I don’t want people to think, that it is completely toxin-free. It’s still there, but what I have in my store is as good as you can get. My cushions and my sofas have no formaldehyde. They use water-based adhesives so there’s no formaldehyde. A lot of the adhesives they use is where the formaldehyde is and some of the plywood that they use in constructing furniture. Some of the furniture you buy in the big-box stores are made from particle board, which is just soaked in formaldehyde.
My biggest goal with my store is to at least start the conversation and start educating people that there is a lot of harmful chemicals in the things that we bring in our home, the fabrics. Fabrics are still difficult to find that are healthier. There are certain standards. There is beginning to be organizations that monitor and test fabrics. I tell people to just look for third-party companies that rate these. Like the Ecotech Standard is one of them that I can think of. I have a line of fabrics that have been run through those.
Basically, what they do is test them for some of the worst, most noxious chemicals and make sure that those aren’t in them. It doesn’t mean they’re chemical-free, but at least there’s no formaldehyde in the fabrics. Some of them have chromium in them. They test for those worst chemicals.
My biggest goal with the store, like I said, is to educate people and start the conversation.
Lisa: Do you carry a full range of furniture and draperies and anything that one would use to actually design the inside of home?
Jan: I do. I do. I have furniture. I have fabrics. I have local custom workroom that will do any kind of sewing. My furniture is all made in the United States. Most everything I have is made in the United States. I have a lot of local products. I’m actually working right now, I haven’t nailed the deal yet, but with another local crafts person who makes lots of really wonderful products for the home to decorate your home with. To me, that is eco-friendly and that you’re supporting our local economy, our local artisans. She also uses fabrics that are made in the U.S. and have a lot of recycled content in them.
I have lamps that are made out of recycled glass. I have some glassware made out of recycled glass, soy candles, which burn clean, they’re actually made here in Maine, with cotton wicks and no fragrance or light fragrance from essential oils. There’s a lot of different choices you can make if you like to do things like burning candles, which a lot of people do, which is another big thing. The candles that you buy at your big-box stores are made from petroleum-based products. You’re burning all kinds of chemicals into your home. It’s just as bad as the Lysol or any of the other types of things that we do to scent our homes. It’s really not doing yourself any favor by burning those.
Lisa: You started your store 4 years ago. Your background is not only in interior design, but you also have a business degree. You’re kind of bringing together the art and the business of all of this.
Jan: Yes.
Lisa: Have you found that the economic environment is more favorable for the work that you’re doing these days?
Jan: It is. Yeah. It was a little bit difficult when I first started. 2012 was really sort of the end of the great recession. Each year, I’m seeing people, especially this year, people are really getting into remodeling and renovating. I’m seeing a lot more building happening. It’s been good.
Lisa: You also, in your own home, have done some work with solar panels and other things that are sort of looking at the environment in a bigger way.
Jan: Yes. I’m very fortunate. My husband has a plumbing and heating business. We have added solar panels that heat our hot water, which is really great. In the summer, we don’t have to run our furnace at all for hot water for 20-somethings that take 45-minute showers. We installed some heat pumps, mini-splits. We have two in our house now, one on the first floor and one in the basement, in my son’s man-cave.
The benefit of that has been huge because we always had to run a dehumidifier in the basement to keep from smelling musty, because mold is another one of my big triggers. Those consumed a lot of energy. With the mini-split running, we didn’t have to run it at all and barely saw a blip on our electric bill. Those are very, very efficient. In the mornings, like this morning, it was very cold when I came down from my breakfast, and I turned on my little mini-split, and it heats the first floor. I don’t have to run the furnace. Yeah, we’ve really made an effort to have an energy-efficient home as well as the products that we brought in to not have toxic products.
Lisa: I’m sure that I should know this, but what is a mini-split?
Jan: They’re not the most attractive thing aesthetically. When my husband brought it in, I said, “Oh, no, that does not please the designer.” They are installed on an outside wall and they run off electricity. They provide both heating and air-conditioning and very, very efficiently. I think my husband is installing them over and over and over right now. Everybody wants them.
Lisa: Why are they called mini-splits?
Jan: I have no idea.
Lisa: We’ll have to get your husband on the show so he can explain those further for us. They’re efficient, and that’s the point.
Jan: Very efficient. Very efficient. When I look at being eco-friendly, I look at a lot of different things. I think it’s great to be as energy-efficient as you can, but I also think it’s great to work toward using and recycling and reusing and keeping the toxins out of house. There’s just so many facets of living sustainably that I think are important.
Lisa: Your children are now 22 and 25. They have been with you throughout this entire interior design business that you have been working on. What types of lessons do you think they’ve come away with?
Jan: They used to call me Nazi recycler. They’re pretty good at recycling cans or whatever products in the house. My son actually works for my husband. He’s the air-conditioning specialist. He’s kind of the guy that installs those mini-splits. For him, he’s very knowledgeable about energy efficiency. I think both of my kids are very eco conscious. My daughter just bought her first house. At 22 years old, I think it’s pretty amazing. I think she’s making very thoughtful choices as far as what she’s doing with her own home now.
Lisa: Are you finding that, when you go out into the community to talk about things like this, that people are more receptive than they once were?
Jan: Much more so than I expected actually. That’s been one of the most surprising things with this business. When I first started this journey and shopping for the products that I wanted to bring in to my store, and I would talk to salespeople and the vendors that I buy from, and they would say things like, “People don’t care about whether it’s eco-friendly or not,” and I would reply, “Well, they do in Maine.” I think people in Maine really appreciate the beautiful environment that we live in and want to keep as beautiful as it is. Like you said, we do spend a lot of time indoors in the winters, so we want to be able to have good air to breathe. Yeah, I’ve been very surprised at how receptive people are to making smarter choices.
Lisa: Is it also getting more cost-effective to buy eco-friendly and body-friendly products?
Jan: Most definitely. I think there’s a lot more available now. What I’m seeing in the furniture industry, I think most U.S.-made furniture now is moving toward removing the formaldehyde from any of the products that they use to construct the furniture with. A lot more of them are offering textiles that are made out of recycled products. A lot more of them, if you go on their websites, any of the big manufacturers, they are paying more attention to how they handle sustainability within their manufacturing plants. They’re recycling, re-purposing, being more efficient with their heat. A lot of them are installing solar heat. I think there’s a lot more products available.
I think what you’re going to find is, probably in another 4 or 5 years, you’re going to start seeing the manufacturers labeling, as we do with our foods, what’s in the furniture because there’s a huge push in Washington to do so. I think a lot of the manufacturers are going to probably jump the gun before they’re forced to.
Lisa: We’ve been talking about some of the shorter term health impacts like asthma and allergies. We also know that there are longer term potentially impacts, reproductive issues. You mentioned people wanting to have healthy furniture for their children to lie on. Some of these toxins have been linked to cancers, primary cancers in children, primary and secondary cancers in children and adults. This is a longer term initiative and one that we need to pay attention to.
Jan: Absolutely. I really think that people need to develop a voice about it. I think if it’s demanded I think, as consumers, if we start demanding, we want to now what we’re exposing our children to and ourselves to, we want to know what’s in these products that we’re bringing in our homes. I think it’s really, really important. I think the Natural Resources Council of Maine is doing a lot in that end. There’s many, many other organizations that are trying to bring that to the forefront, but I think if consumers demand it, it’ll happen. A lot more of the home furnishings are being brought back to being manufactured here in the United States because consumers are demanding it. We don’t want the stuff that’s being created over here from overseas.
I think it’s a matter of if people know that there is some nasty stuff in our home furnishings and start asking. Contact your legislators or councilors or whatever, just have a voice and educate yourselves.
Lisa: Honestly, in the name of compassion for whomever might be creating furniture that has formaldehyde in it, even in other parts of the world, I mean it’s not any better for the people who are working in those factories than the ones for the people who are creating that same sort of furniture here.
Jan: No, it’s not. In fact, I had a conversation with a sales rep not long ago who used to rep a line of case goods, which is wood products. We went to the factory in Vietnam where they were being manufactured. He said they were spraying the finishes on these tables and whatnot with no masks, nothing to help them breathe in a big open space and the factory had little … almost like a ditch running down the aisles where the over-spray would into those ditches, run out into the streets and then to the rivers. That’s the other thing is when people are buying products, ask where they’re made because you know that that’s just … It may be overseas. It may be that far away from us, but, eventually, it’s one big ocean and it will impact us.
Lisa: Jan, for people who are interested in finding more about EcoHome, where can they find you?
Jan: They can find me online. My website is Ecohomestudio.com, and they can call me, stop in, 334 Forest Avenue in Portland, in the old Pier One Building, for those of us who’ve been here for a while.
Lisa: I remember Pier One. I’m glad to know that you’ve taken over that space because I enjoyed that store. I’m sure that you’re filling it appropriately.
Jan: I hear that all the time. People say, “Oh, I miss the old Pier One.” Yeah, it’s a good space to be in.
Lisa: Any final thoughts?
Jan: I guess I would just ask people, please, ask where your product… what you’re buying, where it’s made and how it’s made. Just ask. Ask that question. If the salesperson doesn’t know the answer, don’t buy it, don’t bring it in your home.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Jan Robinson from EcoHome Studio.
I really appreciate all the thoughtfulness that you have put in to the work that you’re doing.
Jan: Thank you.
Lisa: I appreciate the time you’ve taken to come in and speak with us today. Thanks so much.