Shaw's recycled flooring, Grand Canyon

By Liz Switzer
With rising energy costs and global warming at the forefront of public concern, sustainability has increasingly become the focus of architects and designers. Flooring suppliers, distributors and dealers today are thinking outside the box about how to meet the demands of this emerging market, and with the number of green product choices on the market today, going green has never been easier.

The A&D community has long led the green movement and continues to do so. Here is an overview of the top green flooring trends and the most active areas of sustainable design, according to the experts.

1. RECYCLED, RECLAIMED AND RAPIDLY RENEWABLE

A majority of consumers most readily recognize and understand recycling as a major green trend, research has shown. The largest sector of the flooring industry – carpet – has taken this to heart and is making significant strides in what was once an uneco-friendly and chemically intensive process.

Mohawk Industries is one company that has taken a leadership role in environmental issues through its umbrella GreenWorks program with hundreds of environmental initiatives ranging from efforts to cut plant emissions to the industry’s largest recycling project that converts as much as one-quarter of all the recycled plastic soft drink and water bottles sold in North America into carpet fiber. Mohawk diverts more than 3 billion pounds of pre-and post-consumer waste from landfills and over 500 Mohawk products — carpet, carpet tiles, cushion, laminates and ceramic tile — contain recycled materials. Recycled materials come from other products as well, including old tires, roofing materials, old wood furniture, carpet and other sources.

“You get two things out of recycled carpet: as much recycled base fiber as you request and durability,” said Asheville, N.C., interior designer Heidi Travis. “Carpet is basically made to last forever. It uglies out before it wears out.” As a result, often the need is to simply update the look, so Travis likes Milliken’s carpet recovery program for that reason. Through the company’s No Carpet to Landfill Pledge, carpets are returned to Milliken and evaluated for condition and contaminant levels for potential renewal through Earth Square, the industry’s only closed-loop renewal process for modular carpet. The program is one of many at Milliken, which has recorded an unprecedented zero waste to landfills since 1999.

Mohawk last year introduced a naturally sourced carpet called SmartStrand, which is made with DuPont Sorona renewably sourced polymer from the naturally occurring sugars in readily available and renewable crops. The Sorona key fiber ingredient is Bio-PDO, produced from corn sugar. From this ingredient, 37% of Sorona can be made from renewable resources instead of the petrochemical-based ingredients used in most carpets. When compared with those products Sorona uses 30% less energy and reduces CO2 emissions by 63%, so every seven yards of SmartStrand used in a home saves enough energy and resources to equal one gallon of gasoline, according to Mohawk.

One of the greenest options today is wood flooring, particularly reclaimed and certified flooring, and there are a number of companies that now source both including Forest Stewardship Council (FCS) wood, the only certification program endorsed internationally by environmental groups and the U.S. Green Building Council. The National Wood Flooring Association this year also introduced a new Responsible Procurement Program for both domestic and imported products that is backed by FSC and environmental groups.

Technology-driven Shaw, in addition to its environmental soft surface initiatives, now has a recycled wood floor, Grand Canyon, the first wide-width solid made entirely from mill byproducts that would have normally been burned or sent to landfills. Grand Canyon is manufactured with a technologically advanced process that alternates grain pattern and combines it with a state-of-the-art gluing process for premium product.

“We have made leaps and bounds from where we were two years ago in terms of technical information, and recycled content and the necessities we need for sustainable projects,” said Stacey Hodges, a designer at Padgett and Freeman Architects, also located in Asheville. Hodges and Travis have both been involved recently in the environmental specifications for a green school for North Carolina’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians near Asheville in which recycled carpet tile and broadloom, linoleum, cork and painted concrete were used.

Cork has long been used in high-traffic commercial applications like public buildings, but it has been rediscovered because of its green and renewable attributes. Cork has many natural benefits such as insulating and acoustical qualities as well as antimicrobial features. Linoleum, on the other hand, remains one of the most environmentally responsible flooring materials available. Made from rosin or tree sap, wood and cork flour (from tree bark), and linseed oil from flax plants, linoleum is biodegradable with no off-gassing.

2. LOW VOCS, LOCAL MATERIAL AND LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS

Low-VOC carpets with healthier adhesives and backing have become the norm after studies linked poor indoor air quality to health issues, and The Carpet and Rug Institute Green Label Program (CRI) established a rating system that sets those standards. But off- gassing from flooring remains one of the biggest concerns for any green design project as does sourcing products locally (within 500 miles) under LEED, according to architect John Endsley, principal of the Hnedak Bobo Group in Knoxville, Tenn. But the next version of LEED, LEED v3, launched April 27, simplifies the certification system and makes it more user friendly, Endsley said.

LEED v3 recognizes new technologies and advancements in building science and prioritizes energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reductions with an expanded building certification infrastructure based on ISO standards, administered by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). “This takes green to a requirement of maximizing the sustainability of a project,” said Endsley, whose firm is involved in the planning Knoxville’s first silver LEED building – a transit center complete with a vegetative roof. “It will trickle down to every single project and impact the evolution of building in this country,” he said. “It’s an interesting change in direction.”

Third-party certification like LEED gives architects more value to bring to the design table in terms of life-cycle analysis and cost. “There is a perceived benefit to having a green building but there is real value in picking the right material for the floor and in how a client can achieve a much higher return on investment,” said Nell Campbell, a certified LEED architect at Hnedak Bobo.

“Green really means extremely energy efficient and understanding its relationship to the site, all things architects have done for a long time, but these third-party tools have given us more step to stand on, so to speak,” she said. If such programs can be passed into building codes as proposed, sustainable building will be transformed within the next decade, Campbell added.