Laminate flooring has been a green product long before the eco movement came into being. So what makes laminate inherently green?

1. “The obvious benefit is it offers an alternative to cutting down the real tree,” said Milton Goodwin, Armstrong’s vice president of laminate and ceramic products. “Your customers can get the look and feel of exotic and domestic woods [without harming the real thing]. Our laminate is made from wood fibers and wood chips—we use everything expect the bark.” In general, he added, laminate uses about 90% of the tree. “Also, we can use any tree—pine, oak, eucalyptus, etc., so you do not need to use trees that are hard to replenish.”

Roger Farabee, senior vice president of marketing for Quick•Step, said while there are numerous environmentally friendly traits built into laminate floors the aspect of not having to cut down a rare, exotic tree or endangered species is a major consideration that should not be taken lightly. “According to the BBC, the Brazilian government has reported that 20% of the Amazon forests have already been stripped by deforestation. Using only domestic, managed-forest woods that are plentiful we can offer exotic wood decors such as Brazilian cherry, African wengé, mahogany, afrormosia and Malaysian merbau as a part of the product line without negatively impacting the world’s rain forests.”

2. The manufacturing process is less obtrusive to the environment. “We use no adhesives in the manufacturing process— the product is created using heat and pressure only,” said Betsy Amoroso, director of corporate communications for Mannington. “Plus, the decorative paper layer is printed using water-based, low-VOC inks; and the thermoset melamine resin system is also water based.”

3. Manufacturers make use of materials that in the past would have been deemed trash, ultimately ending up in America’s landfills. “Rather than going into a landfill,” Farabee explained, “our rejected product is either integrated into our chip board factory, burned to serve as heat for the laminate process or sent to third-party manufacturers for reuse. Wood waste from our manufacturing is used as bio- mass fuel for process heating in our factories.”

4. “The packaging uses far less cardboard than any other product in the U.S. or Canada,” said Bill Dearing, president of the North American Laminate Flooring Association. “Now those same packaging designs have been adapted for use on products other than laminate flooring.”

Armstrong’s Goodwin added, “Laminate packaging is simpler, using less ink—a two-color process—and also saves money. Not to mention the box itself can be recycled.”

5. Installation. Laminates can be installed without the use of adhesives. In fact, more installations are totally glueless.

Farabee feels the category as a whole has “actually not done enough to promote the legitimate green story of laminate. The average consumer is generally not aware that laminate flooring is a product constructed of recycled materials, supplemented by only highly-sustainable lumber, and that this type of flooring is reusable.”