Green Flooring Trends

In initial client interactions, Matthew Beaton will be the first to start a conversation about green building.

The LEED certified contractor and founder of Beaton Construction knows that while his client base in central Massachusetts may be more green-savvy than most due to the political climate and large number of educational institutions in the region, he still plays the part of educating them on the principals behind sustainability.

“More people are definitely asking about green building options, but part of that is the educational aspect as well—clients are becoming more educated on green topics and products,” says Beaton, a former environmental engineer and sustainability consultant for corporate clients.

And since returning to the construction side of the business five years ago, options for green
building materials have expanded—including in the realm of flooring materials.

What are the best bets in green products? Consider foot traffic, longevity and most importantly—sustainability—when guiding your clients toward their future floors.

Bamboo basics
“There are certainly a fair number of people who are asking for bamboo,” says Tamara Myers, founder and president of Myers Constructs, Inc. in Philadelphia, Penn. With 30 years of industry experience, Myers has made it part of her professional mission to integrate green building practices into her company’s remodeling and renovation work.

But as with any flooring, she says it’s important for clients and contractors to ask: Is this the right material for the right job?

“I think it’s a material you have to be careful with,” says Myers, who typically recommends the harder, stranded bamboo for most floor treatments. Stranded floors are created by mixing polymers with woven floor fibers, reinforcing it enough to produce a higher durability rating on the Janka hardness test than untreated bamboo.

“Bamboo is actually a soft product in its natural form,” she says, adding that early harvesting can result in even softer—but sometimes cheaper—flooring materials.

While its five-year harvest and renewability cycle provides its green moxie, Beaton says the tree’s reputation as “the go-to green flooring” is slightly misleading.

“Almost all of the bamboo that we get in the U.S. comes from China,” he says. “So when you look at the big picture and see how much energy it took to get here, it takes some of the argument out of it.”

Locally grown bamboo is, of course, more eco-friendly, Beaton adds; but the carcinogenic binding agents used to strengthen the floor can result in a less-than-optimal green product.

“The option to re-stain or refinish it just isn’t there,” he adds.

The case for cork
“I love cork,” says Myers, who says that she has encountered a fair amount of problems not with the cork itself, but rather with the newer bonding glues on the market. “Cork has been around a long time, but now they have changed the glues to comply with the new VOC [volatile organic compounds] laws—and they don’t stick as well as they used to,” she says.

After adhesives failed her on several jobs, Myers and her team traded in the glued down cork tile for cork laminated on a substrate, for laminated substrates, which are installed through a tongue and groove system.

“It interlocks, just like a regular wood floor,” she says. “We found that [to be] a good way to get around adhesives.”

Beaton adds that the low toxicity, sustainability and rapid renewal of cork makes it a more optimal green flooring product on some levels, but its porous nature and soft surface make it site-specific within a home.

“I wouldn’t necessarily recommend cork in a bathroom or kitchen,” he says. “And if you are dragging a piano across it, you are going to have a hard time.”

Like linoleum?
“For green flooring, this is one of the best,” Beaton says. Not only is it durable, it’s surprisingly one of the most natural.

“Given its man-made synthetic look . . . you would be surprised that it’s a green product,” he says.

The material’s main ingredient of linseed oil makes it one of the best and brightest in its class.
Often it performs great in kitchens, bathrooms or even a child’s play room, Myers says.

“If a place was going to get a lot of traffic, then I would recommend something like Marmoleum [natural linoleum]—it can take incredible amounts of pressure,” she says.

Gone are the days of drab sheet linoleum splayed across the kitchen floor; today’s products skew from warm earth colors to bright patterns that can give clients and contractors more creative license than ever before.

“You can actually make it look nice by doing a modern application,” Myers says. “And, it’s an affordable green product.”

Other options
Unique materials such as green carpets, recycled glass tiles and even recycled leather floors can also be used as flooring materials.

For less conventional green products, Myers prefers Lyptus, an exclusively farmed tree that is harvested every 10 years in Brazil. Lyptus, a type of eucalyptus tree, looks similar to many other straight grain lumbers.

“The tree grows in straighter, tighter grains and makes for nice-looking floor that is a little more of a consistent product [versus bamboo],” she says. She does add however, that the shipping must be factored in to its overall sustainability.

Original and best
In the end, natural wood floors can still be your clients’ greenest option—as long as they bear the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) seal of approval.

“That is the seal of approval that shows a tree is harvested in a sustainable manner,” Beaton says.

The unparalleled lifespan of a wood floor can also tick up its green factor.

Adds Myers: “It would be anti-green to take out a nice wood floor to put in bamboo or linoleum.”