Timberland has been moving in an eco-friendly direction for awhile now, starting with their products themselves, which they’ve revamped in favor of greener materials that come with less of a carbon impact (like their Earthkeeper line), but their latest New York store is more than a step in the right direction. It’s a leap.

The new Timberland store is located in SoHo, on Broadway between Grand and Broome, and has been designed to appeal to even the most discerning of SoHo shoppers. Just how new the store really is, however, is debatable. The space has been designed with environmental factors serving as the primary focus (as they have been for the Timberland company on a whole lately), and nearly everything about the retail store is not new, but recycled, refurbished or salvaged from another use. The walls are the building’s original brick, the floor is made of wood from old barns and buildings in Pennsylvania, and the wooden wall panels are crafted from old snow fences (and where reclaimed wood was not used, FSC-certified wood was selected). The stone flooring that sits underfoot is made from 70 percent recycled materials. Even small details have not been neglected—when you shut yourself into a changing room, you’ll be concealing yourself with a dressing room curtain made from recycled leather and if you’re looking for a park of green space to stop after shopping you can consult the GREENYC map made of recyclable steel.

While it may one of the most impressive of the Timberland stores, the Soho Timberland store is not the first to be carbon neutral; the company utilizes carbon offsets to achieve carbon neutrality for their retail locations. We’re not as impressed by the carbon neutrality through offsets, however, as we are by things like the Soho store’s energy efficient lighting, which is more of a preventive solution to the energy problems in the U.S. than carbon offsets, which are more like band-aids for a big wound. Let’s hope the Timberland stores keep getting even greener and that the next ones involves renewable energy.

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