Afternoon coffee with: Kelly LaPlante (owner/founder, Kelly LaPlante Organic Interior Design)

Kelly LaPlante is one of my favorite eco-designers—and one of those people that has a zen-like energy and enthusiasm for life that you wish you could bottle and sell. Kelly has specialized in eco-friendly interior design for more than a decade, standing stern in a belief that’s proving to be true: green is a standard, not a style.

Below, we sit down with Kelly over virtual coffee to talk shop: her career, her projects, what’s on her eco-radar. The images below feature the Lexus Hybrid Living Suite at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, which was designed by Kelly, and which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting in person, twice. It’s as beautiful in style as it is in sustainability. My favorite feature: The living space ottoman is crafted from recycled leather car seats! It’s this kind of let’s-make-beauty-out-of-potential-waste creativity that I love about Kelly’s work (and that I just can’t get enough of; see post just before this one).

Regular or decaf (let’s pretend it’s 2pm)?
I would usually have a soy latte but I’m nursing a 4 week old so let’s make that a decaf.

Recycling-geek, vintage-freak, or SUV-driving jock in high school?
Hmmm… I’m not sure I was any of these. Probably a cross between them all. I was a competitive cheerleader (like the ones you see on ESPN who throw each other in the air) and we trained for two hours a day, all year round… That kept me pretty busy but I was also very interested in environmental issues. I remember a class presentation I did where I stretched out a bunch of those plastic six-pack holders so that the holes were big enough to go over the heads of the other students. I went around and draped these things over their neck and then I yelled “Now you know how the dolphins and birds feel!” I was so dramatic!

Okay, okay, now we get serious…

What was your inspiration for OID and your mission behind it?
When I started KLOID I was 22. Honestly, at the time, there was no real mission statement or even a lot of planning. I had been working for some high-end firms in San Francisco and loved design but felt like it was so wasteful. Then I got fired and I decided not to look for another job where I knew I’d be sacrificing my principals. I wanted to do something that I could feel good about without giving up being a designer and just decided to make a go of it on my own. I started by helping people to just reuse what they already had and it grew from there as green resources became more available over the years. Now its been almost 11 years!

What’s a new project you’re really enthused about?
Right now my staff and I are really enthusiastic about an ecolodge that we are designing on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. We are working with an amazing team out there and it is going to be spectacular when it is finished.

Why Venice?
When I moved myself and my company to Los Angeles I landed in Venice because the air is so much cleaner than it is in the valley and it is much cooler—I’m a Northern California girl at heart so really hot weather and smog don’t agree with me. It turns out that Venice was the perfect place for my company because there are so many environmental activists who live here. Plus I have found my dream staff here; they are all locals and they walk or ride their bikes to work everyday.

What’s a new company (or idea, website, resource, etc) on your green radar you want everyone to know about? (Think: shout from the rooftops)
There are so many great bloggers out there who are spreading the word about eco-everything. Organic food, eco-parenting, green design, you name it, someone is writing about it—the only trick is to find it! We recently discovered a great site, bestgreenblogs.com. They have listings of great informative green blogs by writers all over the world. Even though it is not the most sophisticated site on the planet, they make it relatively easy to find someone who is writing about whatever eco-topic you want to know about.

What’s one (or two or three) surprising thing(s) everyone can do today to make the world a more sustainable place?
We vote with our dollar in this country. Whether you are spending $10 or $10,000, if you are spending it on something sustainable you are sending a message to our government that we want more support for the green industry.

Pictured above: écologique: the style of sustainable design, a book of interiors by Kelly, published last year.

You’re an environmental hero (don’t be modest; go with it), but you’re also human. What’s your eco-confession—something that’s been hard to give up in support of a sustainable lifestyle?
We have a big diesel truck. The plan was to run it on bio-diesel and to mix it ourselves at the house. Life got busy, blah blah blah and, to make a long story short, this bio-diesel mixing plan has totally fallen on the back burner. We fill the truck with bio-diesel anytime we are near the ONE station on the westside that sells bio-diesel but the rest of the time it is regular diesel and I feel SO bad about that. Mike is great though, he is a car person and has done all of these conversions so now our one-ton truck actually gets better mileage than an SUV Hybrid, which absolves my guilt a little bit.

What’s your earth day wish?
For citizens to continually become more aware and for leaders to foster the movement in a profound, earth-changing way.

More info on Kelly: Don’t miss her Jak Studio Collection of sustainable furnishings, or The Green Grades, an emerging review site evaluating eco-furnishing companies.

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