Over the last quarter century, a fascinating model of cradle to cradle product design has been unfolding in the New Hampshire North Country. In partnership with DCI—one of New England’s largest and oldest contract furniture manufacturers—Dartmouth College harvests trees from its own forest through its sustainable forestry program and DCI turns those logs into lumber and then long-lasting hardwood furniture. We then install this solid maple furniture, fashioned from Dartmouth’s …
How DCI Is Responding To Plywood Supply Chain Disruption
Like many contract furniture manufacturers, DCI is feeling the impact of lumber shortages because of global supply chain disruption. For contract furniture manufacturers like us, plywood is a key issue. Baltic birch plywood from Russia, a mainstay for case goods, is no longer available because of the war in Ukraine. But even before the war, tariffs on Chinese imports put huge demand on local plywood supplies. When that demand intersected …
How Finger Joint Boards Make Campus Furniture More Sustainable
When you think about sustainability and dorm furniture, you probably don’t visualize the wood joint that holds it all together. But that would be a mistake. Joints matter. A lot. And not just for durability and strength. In particular, I want to highlight the positive impact that finger joint boards can have on the overall resource footprint of your campus furniture. In fact, finger joints conserve more wood than any …
How to Manage Furniture Supply Chain Disruption
Updated 3/2022 If you’re like a lot of purchasing officers or housing professionals in higher ed, you might be scrambling to ensure that you can fulfill your purchasing requirements for 2022. And that makes sense. Furniture supply chains have experienced a perfect storm over the last two years. The global pandemic and its cascading variants. The blockage at the Suez Canal. The US-China trade wars. Even climate change. For example, …
DCI Awarded $706,000 Community Wood Grant From US Forest Service
DCI will use the Community Wood Grant funds to install a renewable biomass cogeneration system to supply heat and electricity to its operation. As part of a decades long initiative to reduce the environmental footprint of our work, starting last year we applied for and won a series of major clean energy grants to upgrade the renewable energy system the heats our factory, kilns, and offices. The Forest Service Community …
The Circular Economy: DCI End Of Life Furniture Program
What should you do when your furniture reaches the end of its useful life? That’s a question that we get a lot. And at DCI, we have a program to help you manage your retiring furniture. In short, our goal is to help you keep it out of the landfill. And to be honest, that’s easier than ever before. If you have solid wood furniture, you have lots of options …
Edge Banding – Everything You Need To Know
When you’re choosing your residence hall furniture and deciding on the specs, you’ll inevitably choose what materials you want. Should it be totally solid wood, including the top? Or should you get solid wood or plywood substrates with laminate tops, or all laminate? Whatever the selection, your furniture is probably going to include edge banding. Why? Because it’s an important part of the construction. And depending on where we use …
Case Study: Sustainable Purchasing at Southwestern University
Summary Southwestern University hired a Sustainability Coordinator and embraced a commitment to zero waste on campus. They reached out to DCI to provide them with sustainable zero waste furniture to furnish two of their residence halls. The Oldest University in Texas Southwestern University (SU) is a private liberal arts school in Georgetown, Texas, just north of Austin. Situated on a 780-acre suburban campus with 1,430 undergrads, the school was founded …
DCI Wins $250K USDA Renewable Energy Systems Grant
I live in the lee of Colorado’s storied front range. The Rocky Mountains are an inspiring and imposing companion and a constant reminder that wilderness is never far away. So it’s disconcerting these days, when so much smoke from nearby wildfires fills the air. I can’t even see the foothills that are normally visible from my home. Floods drenching the Gulf Coast, wildfires burning the West Coast. Catastrophic songbird die-offs …
$75k Vermont Grant Helps DCI Support Local North Country Economies
Northern New England used to be a mecca for mill towns. The ubiquitous rivers and streams that branched across the Northeast United States powered paper, pulp, and textile mills and catapulted America to a pre-eminent position in global manufacturing during the industrial revolution. Two hundred years later, that vaunted seat of manufacturing might has ceded with slow but steady momentum to cheaper southern labor, demographic shifts, and global outsourcing. A …