Sustainable Flooring Guide

Sustainable flooring is flooring for the home or office that is made from a renewable or recycled resource. The main purpose of sustainable flooring is to reduce the amount of new trees that are chopped down in order to making flooring planks. There are many reasons for deforestation around the world, but one of the major causes is the economic value of certain timbers. Rare trees are often prized for their timber to make such things as furniture and flooring. Below is a guide to a few different types of sustainable flooring that is available for purchase in the West. Using sustainable flooring in the home is an important way to make an interior sustainable.

Cork Flooring

The cork oak grows mostly in the Mediterranean area. Portugal is the biggest producer of cork in the world. The cork oak trees takes about 40 years to mature. Once matured it can be harvested for its bark. It is the bark from which cork is made. Removing the bark from the cork oak does not damage the tree. It takes 9 years for the cork oak tree to grow another bark. The cork oak can live for 150 years. If the bark is removed correctly then natural habitat is maintained.

Advantages of Cork Oak Flooring

The great advantage of cork as a renewable resource is that the tree is not chopped down to harvest the resource.

Another advantage of cork is that it is composed of a honeycomb structure that is 85% air. This makes cork flooring soft and 'elastic' - it can take heavy weights and then springs back when the weight is removed. The structure of cork flooring makes it a great thermal and acoustic insulator. In a home cork flooring will help to reduce heating bills in the winter and it helps to muffle the noise of people walking on the floor.

Cork flooring naturally contains suberin. It is a compound used by the tree to conserve water. The suberin in cork flooring makes it water resistant and also fire retardant. Suberin also has antimicrobial properties and so is great for making a home more hygienic.

If you live in Europe and especially if you live in Southern Europe then the transport costs for cork flooring are greatly reduced. This further adds to the green credentials of cork flooring.

Bamboo Flooring

There is horizontal, vertical and strand woven bamboo flooring types. Horizontal and vertical refers to whether the bamboo is laid on edge (vertical) or flat (horizontal). Strand woven bamboo flooring is made by cutting bamboo into strands and compressing the strands under heat with a bonding agent.

Advantages of Bamboo Flooring

Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. Thus bamboo is the best renewable resource. Bamboo can grow without pesticide or fertilizer inputs and so it is often organic. Bamboo needs less water than trees and produces more oxygen than trees. Bamboo is a very hard material that looks like hardwood.

Bamboo flooring is hypo-allergenic because it does not allow dust mites to live. Bamboo also contains 'kun' that makes it antimicrobial. This makes bamboo flooring ideal for those people who suffer from allergies.

Bamboo flooring is easy to clean (just use a dry dust mop) and easy to maintain. The color of bamboo flooring is throughout the flooring plank and so can easily be sanded and a new finish applied.

Advantages of Strand Woven Bamboo Flooring

 

Of all the types of bamboo flooring the hardest is strand woven bamboo flooring. With a hard finish strand woven bamboo flooring can have a Janka Hardness Rating of about 2,500 pounds force. This makes strand woven bamboo flooring the most suitable for high traffic situations and for heavy furniture.

Disadvantages of Strand Woven Bamboo Flooring

Most strand woven bamboo flooring is made from moso bamboo grown in Southern China. This is the main problem with strand woven bamboo flooring - it is very hard to get Chinese companies to take environmental regulations seriously; it is almost impossible to get Chinese companies to participate in fair trade schemes. It is worth checking environmental certification before you buy strand woven bamboo flooring. 

Also strand woven bamboo flooring is made with a bonding agent that contains a small amount of VOCs. For this reason new strand woven bamboo flooring should be allowed to acclimatize and off-gas for a week or more before installation. VOCs are one of the main chemical pollutants in the average home in a developed country.

Reclaimed Hardwood Flooring

 

Reclaimed hardwood flooring is made from wood that has been discarded. The hardwood comes from numerous sources including house renovations, demolitions, building waste, park waste, salvaged wood from mine shafts, old fencing, barns and wine barrels. Such is man's love affair with hardwood that there is plenty of unwanted hardwood available to reuse. To make reclaimed hardwood flooring the salvaged wood is kiln dried and then sent to a mill to be cut into flooring planks.

Advantages of Reclaimed Hardwood Flooring

Reclaimed hardwood flooring looks beautiful. For those people who love the look of wood, the best eco-solution is to buy reclaimed hardwood flooring. The flooring often has a rich patina that is not found on new hardwood flooring. Also reclaimed hardwood flooring tends to be more dimensionally stable than normal hardwood flooring because it has had many years to acclimatize.

Another advantage of reclaimed hardwood flooring is that it stops dust mites breeding and causing allergic attacks for people.

Reclaimed hardwood flooring is great example of upcycling because it is taking something of little value and giving it much greater value. The fact that reclaimed hardwood flooring can be sourced, made and installed locally also cuts down on carbon emissions due to transportation.

Coconut Flooring

 

The coconut like the bamboo is often mistaken for a type of wood because it is hard and looks like wood. Also like bamboo the coconut matures very quickly - in just a year. Coconut palms produce coconuts for about 75 years and then become known as 'senile palms'. These coconut palms need to be cut down and be replaced with new coconuts. Coconut timber is thus a resource that is renewable and virtually free.

Coconut flooring is hard like hardwood flooring. It can take heavy traffic and heavy furniture. It is also easy to maintain and clean. As with the other types of sustainable flooring in this post it is also anti allergenic because it gives no place for dust mites to live and breed. For those people living in or near the tropics coconut flooring makes good ecological sense.

Conclusion

The flooring in a room makes a big impact on the beholder. In many ways the flooring can define the look and feel of a room. Hardwood flooring has a classic timeless look - but so does strand woven bamboo flooring, coconut flooring and reclaimed hardwood flooring. 

Cork is slightly different because it is a 'soft' type of flooring. It is easily stained and so can be made to suit most interior designs.

Carpets often have VOCs in their backings. They also are breeding grounds for dust mites. It is the excrement from dust mites that triggers many attacks of allergic rhinitis. One of the best ways to make an interior more sustainable is to use sustainable flooring.

The Principles of Sustainable Interiors

Making a Building more Environmentally Friendly

Sustainable Interior Design is also known as Green Interior Design. It is the process of making a building more environmentally friendly. This is a big task that can be divided into a number of different categories. The US Green Building Council (USBC) set up Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) to set up metrics by which the building industry could evaluate how green and sustainable a house, office or building was. The metrics are divided into 5 main categories:

1) Reduction of carbon emissions
2) Conservation of water
3) Energy Saving
4) Indoor environmental safety
5) Careful use of resources

I believe it is beneficial to look at these metrics one by one to gain a better idea of what sustainable interior design is all about.

Reduction of Carbon Emissions

Despite those on the fringes of science and politics who claim climate change is caused by alterations in the sun's intensity or by a long cycle of weather patterns, or who just deny climate change altogether, the overwhelming majority now accept the evidence. This evidence that the levels of carbon dioxide in the air is increasing and that this trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing average temperatures to raise every year. It is undeniable that the polar caps are melting and that sea levels are also raising.

Much of the blame for this is down to mankind's economic activities. Burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution has made a profound impact on the atmosphere. As economies increase so does the amount of carbon emissions. With the recent rise to prominence of such economies as China, Russia, Turkey and Brazil more carbon is being put into the atmosphere than ever before. At the same time photosynthesis by plant life that turns carbon into oxygen has decreased as more nature is cleared and more trees are chopped down. As the seas are being polluted plankton(also known as phytoplankton) is being lost that also absorbs carbon from the atmosphere.

A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon emissions given off for any given project. The aim of sustainable design is to reduce the carbon footprint of a house to a minimum. This is done in a number of ways.

• Reducing transport carbon costs (trucks etc. usually burn petrol) by sourcing materials directly.
• Looking at the carbon throughput of each item used for the building - quantifying how much fossil fuel was needed to make each item eg. mining for resources, transport, assembly etc.
• Reducing the amount of energy that is not from a renewable energy supply that is needed to construct the building and to keep it running. Such factors to consider are heating and cooling and the use of photovoltaic panels.
• The carbon emissions of those who construct the building  - ie. their transport costs and the carbon emissions  of the machines used for construction.

Every aspect of a building's interior and exterior can be assigned a carbon value.

Conservation of Water

Already many parts of the USA are classified as in a 'moderate to severe drought'. The fossil water supplies of India is approaching zero. 1 in 8 people already lack access to safe water supplies (water.org). 70% of the world's fresh water is used on agriculture. As the world population grows more food will be needed and fresh water supplies will shrink even further. The UN estimates that by 2025, forty-eight nations, with combined population of 2.8 billion, will face freshwater “stress” or “scarcity”. (ibid). Make no mistake about it - water will be as important a commodity in the future as oil is now. Wars will be fought over fresh water supplies.

Against this backdrop it is very easy to understand why we should conserve water supplies in the home. An important part of green interior or sustainable interior design is about designing homes that need less water to make and use less water to run.

Energy Saving

Saving electricity is very important to green interior design or sustainable design. The aim of the Passive House is to keep an interior at a comfortable temperature without the use of heating or cooling devices. This is done by superinsulation that traps heat or cool air in a home. Only when it gets really hot or cold will a Passive House need inputs of heating/cooling. This can be powered by photovoltaic panels on the roof.

Most electricity is generated by burning coal, oil or natural gas. These are not only limited resources but the burning of these resources also increases carbon emissions. Burning coal also releases the heavy metal mercury that poisons ground water supplies. By using less electricity a home produces less carbon and uses less natural resources. The environment benefits with less pollution and less carbon in the atmosphere; and people benefit from less harmful pollution and money savings.

The metric of energy saving as laid down by LEED is a perfect example of the Triple Bottom Line - 'people, planet, profits'. It is the profit motive that drives a lot of sustainable design refits to a building. Saving energy saves money that can be used to pay for the changes and to eventually record profits.

Examples of energy saving methods include:

• The use of solar panels and wind turbines to create clean, green energy
• The use of a heat pump. It is 3 or 4 times more efficient than a regular electrical resistance heating system.
• Switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs.
• Using a programmable thermostat to avoid over heating or over cooling an empty building
• Using a smart strip to override stand by on electrical appliances
• Changing washing machines, air-con units, TVs and other electrical equipment to Energy Star recommended products.

Indoor Environmental Safety

Part of the role of a green interior designer is to make spaces that are healthy for people to live. People in the developed world spend 90% of their lives in doors. Due to lack of ventilation levels of polluting and unhealthy substances in the air can be 5 times higher indoors than outdoors. To make people healthier in their homes and offices it is essential to keep indoor air as free as possible of such things as volatile organic compounds, radon and dust mite excrement. This can be done by:

• Replacing VOC containing products such as thinners, varnishes, paints, air fresheners, furniture glue with non VOC alternatives.
• Sourcing antique furniture and other items for the home that has off-gassed all health threatening VOCs
• Testing a home for radon levels
• Installing bamboo, reclaimed hardwood or cork flooring
• Using bamboo blinds and shades instead of curtains

Another big worry for indoor health are all the toxic and dangerous chemicals used in the home for cleaning. Green cleaning alternatives include using lemon, vinegar and baking soda.

Careful Use of Resources

Hardwood, coal, oil, natural gas, iron ore, aluminum and many other resources commonly used in the home and office are fast running out. If we are going to make homes that are sustainable we have to learn how to stop our reliance on these limited resources and instead find new and creative ways to use renewable resources that grow quickly enough to keep up with demand. Such renewable resources include bamboo, rattan, water hyacinth and cork. Other strategies are to use recycled resources or to take unwanted resources and turn them into something of higher value (upcycling) such as reclaimed hardwood flooring.


Where possible resources should be taken locally and with minimum impact to the local surroundings. If hardwood is needed then it is better that it is taken from a forest that practices sustainable forestry.

Furthermore, the impact of building in an area must be assessed and the damage to the environment limited as possible. Building interiors must also be designed as to reduce pollution to the surrounding area.

Conclusion

This is just a bare outline and a summary manifesto of how sustainable design is ideally practiced. The idea is that the methods, tests and systems for sustainable design should always be modified and improved; and should always respond to the needs of the local people and environment.

Our only hope for a secure future and a decent living standard for future generations lies in improving our ways of designing and building homes. They have a fundamental impact on us, the environment and the future. This places sustainable interior design at the heart of what the environmental movement is trying to achieve.