When 38-year-old web developer and photographer Randy Kato moved into The Octagon, the green apartment building on Roosevelt Island, and began shopping for furniture, he found that "some of the most beautiful pieces were sustainable ones."

He ended up buying a wooden dining table made from scrap strips by Scrapile and seatbelt dining chairs from J. Persing. "The deciding factor on the table was that it was green," he says, "but it had a striking visual impact that I fell in love with the first time I saw it. It's a huge conversation piece, and when people find out it's sustainably produced, it spawns a new conversation."

Kato, who drives a hybrid Ford Escape and opts for green when there is a choice, says the extra cost is worth it. "I'm willing to pay more for sustainable choices," he says. "The Scrapile dining table was almost double my price range, but it's an investment."

These days it seems as though everyone is talking about "sustainable style" and "green style." But green and sustainable are not styles any more than wood or plastic are styles. And that's the key—the words "green" and "sustainable" refer not to how a product looks but how and what it is made of.

"Green is styleless in a positive sense," says Manhattan architect and product designer David Bergman. "The term I've been using is 'transparent green.' It's not visible because it doesn't look 'green,' and that's the good thing."

And even with this clarification, the words "green" and "sustainable" have different meanings for different buyers and different designers. Why the confusion? Because we all are still pretty much neophytes—or pretty darn green, if you will—when it comes to being green.

The material for Loll's Adirondack Chair comes from recycled plastics.

"I look at is as an umbrella of sustainability," says Kim Nadel, a certified interior designer, LEED-accredited professional, and co-founder and owner of the Brooklyn-based NICHE environmentally smart design group. "Does green mean zero waste? Does it mean organic? Does it mean recycled material? If yes, where did the material come from and how is it being recycled? I'm looking for things that create zero waste."

To this, Barry Shapiro, co-founder of Watertown, Mass.-based Furnature, adds the word "healthy." "We started in the 1990s, a long time before a lot of other 'green' companies, and our furniture uses the purest ingredients. The first pieces were made for a woman whose body became sensitive to everyday materials, so then and now we put human health first. Any other green benefit was an afterthought."

The good news is that when it comes to good style, green is getting a lot greener and a lot better looking. No longer are buyers forced to sacrifice style to save the environment. A number of top designers, among them Angela Adams, who introduced a collection of fabric made from post-industrial recycled material last year, have embraced eco-friendly principles.

Although many of the green furnishings on the market have a contemporary sensibility, there still are a variety of traditional styles that are going green. The Copeland Co., for instance, uses controlled and/or Forest Stewardship Council–certified wood in its Frank Lloyd Wright collection, which reproduces iconic pieces from the prairie architect's Arts and Crafts-style pieces.

Bamboo Slide Kitchen Island by Brave Space

"It's eco-luxury," says Manhattan interior designer Cheryl Terrace, whose Vital Design firm has been creating green interiors for two decades. "We have choices, and they are affordable, and it's a total blessing."

The trend is exemplified in architect S. Russell Groves's first collection of custom furniture, Dentro, which is made from sustainable and Forest Stewardship Council-certified woods. "I wanted to create refined and elegant pieces that bring 'green' to a different level," says the Manhattan architect of the collection, which will debut this summer. "The contemporary pieces combine simple shapes with luxurious materials and a surprise of color."

Josh Dorfman, founder and CEO of Vivavi, which sells green furniture from makers around the country, says that 2007 will be the year of the green.

Normal Design's Juice Clock is made with recycled plastic

"There are two things I see," he says. "Designers are making things that are more accessibly priced, and there will be a push into soft furniture, that is, upholstered furniture, and they will be very high-end. As for buyers, green isn't the most important thing. Most of them still just love the look."

For Thomas Bina, chief designer and creative director of Los Angeles–based Environment Furniture, the green design envelope still isn't being pushed enough. "People who are jumping on the bandwagon still are focusing on material, not design," he says. "I don't see any emphasis on design."

It is only natural that green is making colorful inroads in the furniture-design world because, as Bergman is quick to point out, that field always follows architecture. "Because buildings use so much of our resources, furniture is riding on its coattails,"  he says. "And fashion is a couple of steps behind."

Iannone Sanderson's Signature 2.0 Console features kirei board, made from sorghum waste

"But with each new month," Gleicher says, "new products were coming on board. There was almost a collegial feel because each time we found good sources, they told us of others. Everybody knew everybody else."

Today, less than a year after Gleicher and Sharkey moved in to their green house, there are many more true-blue "green" design companies that offer everything from organic fabrics to chairs fashioned from post-industrial waste like car seatbelts. And retailers such as Vivavi and ABC Carpet & Home sell a variety of green furniture and decorative accessories.

The greening of design is being propelled by a whole new generation of designers for whom sustainable solutions are second nature. "Green designers are some of the most forward thinking," says Dorfman, author of The Lazy Environmentalist (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, May 2007) and co-host of the Sirius Satellite Radio show of the same name.