Herman Miller Limerick Chairs - Environmental Product Summary - Manual

Our sustainability goals by the year 2020:
• Zero carbon footprint
• Zero landfill
• Zero hazardous waste generation
• Zero air emissions (VOCs)
• Zero process water use
• 100 percent renewable electrical energy use via renewable
energy credits and a power purchase agreement
• Company buildings constructed to a minimum LEED Silver certification
• 100 percent of sales from DfE approved products
Environmental Product Summary
Limerick ® Chair
Design Story: A Side Chair that’s Ergonomic
and Green
Designing the award-winning Limerick chair allowed
Tom Newhouse to exercise two of his passions: the
study of emerging office issues and the implementation
of socially conscious, green design concepts.
He observed that office workers are increasingly using
temporary seating, so he made Limerick chairs light,
stackable, and easy to move. Then, Newhouse added
the unexpected: He applied his industrial design
expertise to make Limerick highly ergonomic, an
uncommon feature in side chairs.
And since he’s committed to designing products and
using technologies that preserve the environment,
it’s no coincidence that Limerick is also 100 percent
recyclable.
Herman Miller’s Design Protocol
Our commitment to corporate sustainability naturally
includes minimizing the environmental impact of each
of our products. Our Design for Environment team (DfE)
applies environmentally sensitive design standards to
both new and existing Herman Miller products.
The DfE Design Protocol goes beyond regulatory
compliance to thoroughly evaluate new product
designs in four key areas:
• Material Chemistry and Safety of Inputs—
What chemicals are in the materials we specify, and
are they the safest available?
• Disassembly—Can we take products apart at the
end of their useful life, to recycle their materials?
• Recyclability—Do the materials contain recycled
content, and more importantly, can the materials be
recycled at the end of the product’s useful life?
• LCA—Have we optimized the product based on the
entire life cycle?
Material Content
The Limerick chair’s components are constructed from
steel and plastic.
The Limerick chair is up to 100 percent recyclable at
the end of its useful life.
Limerick is comprised of 71-percent recycled materials.
This figure breaks down to 59- percent post-consumer
and 12-percent pre-consumer recycled content.
• Steel components contain approximately 35 percent
recycled content and are 100 percent recyclable.
• Most metal components have a powder-coat paint
finish that emits negligible volatile organic compounds
(VOCs).
• Plastic components are identified with an ASTM
recycling code whenever possible, to aid in returning
these materials to the recycling stream.
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1
Y
® Y and Z and Limerick are among the registered trademarks of Herman Miller, Inc.
® GREENGUARD is a registered trademark of the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute.
© 2012 Herman Miller, Inc., Zeeland, Michigan
STEEL 74%
PLASTIC 26%
PRE-CONSUMER
RECYCLED CONTENT 12%
POST-CONSUMER
RECYCLED CONTENT 59%