With environmental issues becoming more and more prominent in the public eye, many consumers are searching for alternative flooring solutions that reduce waste and help to preserve the environment. As demand increases, many companies are moving to fill this need and offer a variety of products to cater to environmentally-conscious buyers. Some of these options include sustainable woods, alternative “woods”, and linoleum.
Sustainable woods are harvested from trees that are selectively cultivated and then harvested, rather than entire swatches of forest being cut down. This minimalizes damage to the environment and saves more trees, as well as allowing trees to regrow at a rate sufficient enough to replace those that are cut down. Most sustainable wood costs the same as its standard counterparts, so cost is not prohibitive. A non-profit organization, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), exists to monitor the techniques used to raise and harvest the trees, and certify that the wood is indeed a “green” alternative harvested using proper sustainable practices. The FSC has a list of 57 criteria that must be met before the product can be certified, and these stringent standards help to ensure that the harm to the environment is reduced as much as possible. FSC-certified lumber is beginning to become more and more widely available, though currently it still only makes up a very small portion of a retailer’s stock.
In addition to sustainable wood, there are alternatives to wood that retain many of the looks and qualities that consumers want from a hardwood floor. Bamboo is an exceedingly quick-growing variety of grass with a growth cycle that allows it to be sustainably harvested approximately every seven years, and is extremely abundant. You can get bamboo flooring, bamboo blinds, exterior wooden shutters, and many other household goods as well as very cheap furniture that uses this great material. Synthetic wood also provides another alternative with the same aesthetically-pleasing appearance of a standard hardwood floor. Made from wood scraps that are broken down and then reassembled with durable low-toxicity glue, engineered wood is then covered with a veneer to give it the appearance of a normal plank of wood. These synthetic boards are extremely sturdy and recycle materials that are left over, reducing waste and preserving resources.
Linoleum is another environmentally-friendly flooring material, and is among one of the most effective in terms of reducing impact on the environment. Linoleum is made from renewable resources such as tree sap, wood flour recycled from lumber mills, and renewable cork flour made from the bark of the cork tree. Linoleum is fairly durable, and due to its organic nature, when it is finally removed it will biodegrade rather than filling up landfills. New designs also allow linoleum to be installed more easily, rather than the standard time-consuming method of gluing down large sheets of it. Some brands even feature a system that allows linoleum tiles to be “clicked” together, similar to the tongue and groove system in cork or hardwood floors. This also limits the use of potentially harmful adhesives and glues, further reducing any impact on the environment.