Chicago—At Greebuild ’07 Armstrong unveiled Migrations Bio-Based Tile (BBT) with BioStride polymer. The fruition of a multi-year, multi-million dollar research and design project, Bio-Stride provides the same or better performance attributes as vinyl polymers, said Frank Ready, president and CEO of Armstrong Floor Products, yet contains 13% bio-based content by weight.

The patent-pending technology for BioStride is currently composed of 13% bio-based material that today is made from corn. The rest is made from fossil fuel-based polymers—some of which are biodegradable.

BioStride’s first application is in a commercial tile, Migrations BBT. Available in the first quarter of 2008 in 28 colors that coordinate with Armstrong’s complete portfolio of products, Migrations also contains 10% pre-consumer recycled content, 75% limestone, 14% BioStride and only 1% pigments.

Armstrong estimates that a 20,000-square-foot installation of BBT—a typical truckload of product—saves energy and natural resources equivalent to 72 gallons of petroleum.

Along with the green attributes, the product is not only affordable to traditional VCT, it features twice the indent resistance, has more than five times greater resistance to impact and is more than 2.5 times more resistant to cracking caused by uneven subfloors.

In addition, there are no special maintenance or installation requirements. It has the identical gauge of composition tile and is maintained by using traditional resilient flooring maintenance and cleaning methods.