Rustic Soul

RUSTIC SOUL DESIGNS is focusing on being a greener business, conscious about our planet and making as much as we can to make a difference. Every little helps, and we want to take part. We want to improve, we want to inspire change. We are furniture makers with a Green conscience.

We are constantly working on projects which focus on REUSING off cuts of timbers, little bits that were left overs, almost insignificant, too small to be part of most projects, but big enough to create a new piece. Someone saw rubbish and we saw an opportunity to create.

We see the importance in RECYCLING, and the sawdust we create at our busy workshop gets collected in the old blue bins, that we picked up from the community (reusing!). We bring the dust to “Biodynamic Community Otago” (check them out on our “Associations” section) and they turn it into a high quality compost, converting our sawdust into nourishment for the Mother Earth! We are proud to engage in all the additional work required to ensure that no other material is going in those bins; The sawdust must be from untreated natural timber only, with no paint, no nails no varnish, otherwise it would contaminate the earth. We are proud to engage this way, in order to make a difference.

We are committed to REDUCE our own waste, those materials that we cannot reuse nor recycle, and to do so, RUSTIC SOUL DESIGNS will never quote any new work that requires the use of treated timbers.
Treated timbers produce toxic waste, they cannot be recycled by us, nor used to create compost or animal bedding; They are not even safe to burn. We know treated timber could be reused and turned into new particle boards, but we do not have the capacity to do so, therefore, if we were to continue with the use of it, the sawdust, offcuts and shavings of this material would create rubbish that we are unable to repurpose.
For this reason, we commit to completely avoid it, and by doing so, we are REDUCING the waste we produce.

All the Natural timbers we choose to work with CAN be REDUCED, REUSED, and RECYCLED by us, on our workshop in Arrowtown, Queenstown. This is our approach to being a greener business.

We are excited about this! Come and join us!!