Ever wonder about the final destiny of all those empty Molson's, Merlot, and designer water bottles you return to the LDB or toss in your blue box? Try a bathroom wall. Remoulded, and imprinted with three-dimensional dragonflies and other designs, they morph into handsome accent pieces at Mellon Glass, in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Some terminology first: this is postconsumer glass, culled from folks like you and me. Postindustrial glass, on the other hand, is scraps–like the broken shards and off-cuts that Burnaby's Interstyle Ceramic and Glass melts down and reconfigures as Agate tiles, which look like river pebbles made of citrine, topaz, sapphire, and other gems. Another line, Aquarius, suspends chunks of different colours in clear glass. Picture terrazzo viewed through a thin skim of water. This is the big surprise: the sheer beauty of materials that would otherwise have been added to the landfill, enjoying a useful second life.

If you're concerned about the size of your environmental footprint, know that these days it's getting progressively easier to renovate with a clear conscience. Oddly, for such an avowedly "green" metropolis, Vancouver has lagged behind Portland, Seattle, and other North American cities in having a one-stop shop for green building supplies. This was brought home to Pete McGee during his travels around the Pacific Northwest as part of his work with reclaimed woods. He joined forces with Alastair Moore, whom he had met at SFU in 1993 when both were studying resource and environmental management, and two months ago, the pair launched GreenWorks Building Supply (386 West 8th Avenue), the city's first single source for all-green surfaces and construction materials.

Here, aesthetics meets environmental smarts. Don't envision the clunky dÉcor of a 1970s cabin on Denman. The materials are more the home counterpart of today's silky and smart sustainable fashions. "We carry them because they're stylish and high quality, not just because they're green," says McGee, indicating the sleek possibilities of sorghum straw, coconut palm, and bamboo for furniture and cabinetry, and the store's own walls, which are covered with a plaster finish from American Clay. "Traditional plasters set. This you can reconstitute with water," he says. One finish contains crushed seashells. You can create your own plaster, he says, by adding mica or straw. "It's a very hard material. If you chip it, you can spot-patch it."

"These products, as much as anything, have to do with health indoors and air quality," says McGee, pointing out the zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) paint line designed by Little YOLO specifically for nurseries. Little YOLO is an offshoot of YOLO, a Portland-based paint company founded by two women with fine-arts backgrounds. "Every product we have in the store now, we love," says McGee.

A "living wall" of indoor plants is proof that plaster and paint aren't all you can do for vertical surfaces. Water is poured into a trough at the top of a wall-mounted tray. From there, it snakes down through the foliage. Forty dollars gets you one 20-centimetre square (soil and plants cost extra), but decoration isn't its only potential function. McGee says the in-store example is prompting restaurateurs around town to consider it for the ultimate in fresh basil and parsley.

As for your floor, a natural muted green is just one of the vegetable-dyed colours you can install. Nature's Carpet, a nontoxic line developed by 60-year-old local family business Colin Campbell (which has been involved in selling "green" carpets since the early 1990s) comes in the expected neutral palette, as well as soft hues like green, yellow, and blue. Made of pure wool with a nontoxic latex backing, it is biodegradable–when your rug has outlived its usefulness, you just haul it outside to the compost.

"We know all our suppliers," says GreenWorks' McGee, noting a level of support and information-sharing among green retailers that is absent, in his experience, from regular retail stores. "We'd like to get more local companies," he says, such as Dinoflex in Salmon Arm, which uses postconsumer rubber products (think tires) to make funky and practical flooring, and Second Wind Timber in Squamish, which uses old-growth wood salvaged from industrial and commercial buildings to make floorboards and doors. How about a kitchen counter made from old telephone books? PaperStone, a company in Washington state, combines paper (up to 100-percent recycled) with a resin made from cashew shells to create smooth-surfaced countertops in, among other colours, indigo, bottle green, and concrete.

Riding the crest of the enviro-friendly wave is not without its challenges. While costs are comparable to those of conventional materials of the same quality, some recycled finishes, flooring, and countertops, being innovative, may require special instructions for installation and care. Starting mid April, GreenWorks will host how-to seminars.

"Green isn't always simple," says McGee. "We don't consider ourselves preachy about it. If you can do a little, that's great."