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About Environmentally Friendly Flooring (Green Floors)
Deciding what type of flooring to install is a very important in terms of environmentally responsible choices when building your home—particularly for the indoor environment. Most modern homes have wall-to-wall carpeting installed over subflooring, which carries significant environmental burdens and indoor air quality problems. The flooring products described here increase the quality of indoor are because they do not trap dust and other allergens.
Notes on Environmentally Friendly Flooring**
Finishing: Some floor finishes are very high in VOCs and may be quite hazardous both to homeowners and the environment. To greatly improve indoor air quality and avoid toxic emissions, use finishes that are non-toxic with low- or zero-VOCs.
Durability: To be environmentally friendly, a wood floor has to last a long time and require relatively little maintenance. Proper maintenance depends on how the wood was originally finished. With natural oil finish, a periodic waxing using a natural beeswax-based product can keep a floor looking great for decades and is environmentally safe.
Bamboo harder than wood?: Vertical and horizontal stripped bamboo averages 1820 on the Janka Hardness Scale which is softer than Cherry (2350) but harder than Maple (1500). Strand woven bamboo, however, has been measured to exceed 3000 on the Janka Hardeness Scale.
| Bamboo |
Concrete |
Cork |
Hardwoods |
Linoleum |
Stone |
Tile |
Engineered Floor Joists |
Bamboo Flooring
CSI Division: 096223 | Residential Category: Bamboo Flooring
In general, bamboo flooring is made by laminating strips of bamboo into solid blocks and them milling them into standard flooring profiles. Strand-woven bamboo, however, is made of compressed bamboo fibers which makes the material much more dense.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Sustainably harvested Bamboo is a fast-growing, self-replenishing fiber resource.
- Strand-woven bamboo makes a very hard, durable flooring material.
Negative Environmental Considerations
- Although offgassing is less significant than particleboard, bamboo strips are laminated with a urea-formaldehyde binder, which offgas small amounts of formaldehyde.
- Bamboo products are imported from Southeast Asia and so transportation is an issue.
Concrete Floor
This is a low-cost option for slab-on-grade homes or in basements—the concrete can be colored textured or pattered during finishing.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Concrete with fly ash and other industrial by products is environmentally preferable.
- Concrete flooring provides high durability and less likelihood of biological contamination problems.
Negative Environmental Considerations
- The production of Portland cement generates significant volumes of CO2, a significant greenhouse gas and so substitutes like fly ash and slag should be used when possible.
Cork Flooring
CSI Division: 096229 | Residential Category: Cork Flooring
This natural floor product offers a sustainable alternative to hardwood lumber flooring products. Cork is the bark of a type of Mediterranean oak tree.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Sustainably harvested cork bark is harvested on a nine year cycle. The bark grows back, leaving the tree as healthy as ever, protecting the environment and making cork one of the most renewable flooring resources available.
- Cork flooring can be made from left over wine bottle corks and so diverts waste from landfills.
- Cork flooring is naturally hypoallergenic, mold-resistant and is biodegradeable at the end of its useful life.
Negative Environmental Considerations
- Since these are multilayered roofing systems, they can be thicker and heavier than conventional roofs. Therefore, the roof structure needs to be engineered to accommodate any increased weight on the roof.
- Green roofs must also be watered, which can be expensive, however, use of native plantings and rainwater harvesting will significantly decrease, if not eliminate, the amount of water needed for landscaping.
Hardwood Floors
CSI Division: 096400 | Residential Category: Wood Flooring
Certified, Salvaged or Recovered hardwood flooring is good for its low environmental impacts and minimal contribution to indoor air quality problems.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Hardwood should come from properly managed forests or be certified by a third-party organization. Certified wood is widely available.
- Recovered and Salvaged Hardwood, such as longleaf yellow pine, cypress, redwoods, and Douglas fir, is widely available and should be used provided all appropriate documentation is presented.
True linoleum, not vinyl linoleum, is a biodegradable product made largely from natural ingredients including linseed oil, pine resin, limestone, wood flour or cork.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Linoleum is a great alternative to PVC, or vinyl, which is a synthetic material, manufactured largely from petrochemical and chlorine feedstocks. There are many environmental and health concerns over the manufacture and disposal of PVC.
- Linoleum is made from natural, non-toxic components and does not contain formaldehyde, asbestos, or plasticizers.
Negative Environmental Considerations
- The downside of linoleum is that is offgasses linseed oil fumes which some people are sensitive to.
- Because it is an all-natural product and can be vunerable to mold, linoleum should not be used in areas with excess moisture, such as bathrooms.
Stone Flooring
CSI Division: 096340 | Residential Category: Stone Flooring
Natural stone is particularly appropriate if there is a local source.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Stone is a very good choice for flooring as it can often be taken from local quarries thus reducing the embodied energy and life-cycle costs.
Recycled glazed tile is an excellent choice for flooring, particularly where floors are likely to get wet.
What Makes It A Green Product
- A primary environmental impact associated with virgin tile is that the embodied energy required to mine and transport raw materials can be quite high and so should be considered in terms of life-cycle costs.
- A primary health impact of tile flooring is the compound used for installation, which can contain adhesives with high VOC concentrations. To minimize these health concerns, choose a zero-VOC, nontoxic, tile adhesive or a thin-set cement mortar.
- Tile with high quanities of post-consumer recycled content is readily available and preferable to reduce waste.
Negative Environmental Considerations
- Only comes from the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states as well as from Europe; therefore depending on where you live, transportation costs and environmental consequences should be considered.
- Tile production is energy intensive.
Engineered Wood Floor Joists
CSI Division: 061733 | Residential Category: Wood I-Joists
This product is made by gluing together a lot of little pieces of wood. Engineered Wood floors can be made of various types including, plywood, laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and Oriented Strandboard.
What Makes It A Green Product
- Engineered wood is a great alternative to cutting down and milling trees.
- Using Engineered wood reduces pressure on old-growth forests.
- Engineered Wood I-Joists are straighter, more dimensionally uniform, less, likely to be squeaky, more resistant to warping and twisting and available in greater lengths and depths than solid sawn lumber and so require less maintenance.
Negative Environmental Considerations
- The binding used in Engineered Wood Floors, as with all EWP, are usually made with phenol-formaldehyde or polyurethane glue. Phenol-formaldehyde may emit some formaldehyde, but far less than products made with urea-formaldehyde.
- Polyurethane or MDI (methyl diisocyanate) used for EWPs contains no formaldehyde but during manufacturing is very toxic until the chemicals are fully cured.
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