Plugs and Switches, Wood and Plastic.

Deciding on something as common as a switch or a plug is not that easy choice to make with such a huge variety of designs out there. The fact that we want ours to be made from an eco material reduced our choices drastically. However, a while ago at Edu’s house I fell in love with his switches, beautifully made from wood with just the actual mechanism being plastic. He told me then that they stopped selling wooden switches but after many google searches and phone calls, I found out they still do.
The company is called EDE, which stands for Decorative Electric Elements Their factory is based near Madrid. Most of the wood they use is from Europe and so we chose a local oak whose colour goes nicely with the wooden beams. Now, the only downside of these beautiful elements is that they are quite pricey. A single switch with its border for example costs around €35! That was a bit too much luxury for our plug and switch budget and so we decided to just choose the light switches in wood.
Back to plastics it was for the plugs. Luckily the Spanish company Simon offer nice and simple designs and all their materials are recyclable. They fulfil the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards. ISO 14001 specifies requirements for an environmental management system. For a detailed explanation of what that means click here.
Another company that do luxury electric components is the Barcelona based company Llinàs. They use exclusively noble and recyclable materials such as porcelain, wood, metals or glass, all natural and fit for sustainable construction so they say. Unfortunately we didn’t quite like their traditional and rustic style but check it out, the round porcelain 3D switch might grow on you…even though the price might not that easily…