http://www.beaumondefloors.com/greenflooring.aspx

"Eco friendly Amtico floors are an excellent sustainable flooring choice"

any thoughts on the above statement as its made out of PVC ?
had a couple of jobs laying some recently ,thought I'd look into it for a bit more info

never considered it to be eco friendly in anyway though.
thanks Jim

thoughts on the above statement as its made out of PVC?

They lied.

Stone?

Local stone, if suitable, could be eco friendly. Shipping heavy lumps of exotic stone from far away places might be less so.

Marmoleum appears to be eco friendly but might be less suitable for "wet" rooms? A quick search on the web suggests that it has been used for kitchens and bathrooms with some satisfied customers and others less happy. It appears to be relatively high maintenance.

Neither of the above seem to have the simple fit and forget convenience that would be ideal for a vinyl replacement.

Hi,

Not sure if suitable for all domestic uses as such, probably just play areas maybe – but there are tiles that are claimed as 100% recycled plastics from a company called “versatile flooring company”, the tile is called “ecotile”. As they do static dissipating stuff its mainly for industry, but as its available in pretty much any colour is great for kids rooms etc etc. Claimed to last 25 years. I think they do flooring that is not from recycled so it would only be the eco variety with the high claims.

Nothing to do with me – looked good – made in the UK

Cheers Mike up North

Resurrected again!
Flooring finishes are considered important in the environmental impact of a building as they are likely to be change quite regularly due to wear or personal preference.
With the fact that people may only live in a place for 5ish years and new owner may want their own 'personality' reflected in the décor.
What's the thoughts on flooring selection for least impact for short life and ease of recycling back in usable a resource.

Mdf based laments, use waste/by product in production, contain glues (VOC?) so potential negative , what end of life use would these have?

So a good use of by product resource initially but no end of life return to the resource chain.

Laid some marmoleum click lament before xmas , very nice product to work with and good feel once down. It claims eco credential but I cant see the various layer being separated at end of life for reuse.

Engineered floor might be similar post use due to the glues ? and wood use virgin wood in production.

Real wood , same as above but no glues ( other than possible installation ) so would go in the wood bin for burning , mulching etc.

Carpet , Wool , acrylics , etc. Fabrics seem to have currently a good set up for collction and recycling via clothes/fabric banks which also take carpet . though I see a lot go straight in the landfill/general waste bin down the council recycling centres ( do they sort these bins pre dumping ?)

Tiles - ceramic , stone, slate - hardwearing , recycled to hardcore but quarrying etc to get virgin resource

OK Nick, you do that one, and I'll sing along and do some harmonies with the marmoleum click lament.

Sorry Jim couldn't resist

To answer your question Jim, I think few floor coverings have much of an end of life use. Perhaps natural stone, if laid on a decoupling matting could most easily be cleaned and re-used. all wool carpet with a wool felt underlay, which incidentally, is itself recycled, maybe represents one of the most easily recycled soft floorings. Solid wood plank if nailed could be removed and re-machined albeit with a bit of difficulty. Most other highly engineered products seem only good for incineration, or as you say hardcore.

Always worth finding out what the environmental credentials are of the worse product, and then seeing if it is a 'big number'.

You may well find that a polypropylene carpet has little value as a recyclable product and a high embodied carbon/energy content, and uses oil, but is such a small part of the overall embodied energy that it is not worth worrying about. Then you can improve on that if you wish to.

Posted By: jamesingramRelative to what

To the overall environmental costs of running a house. If the difference is say 1 or 2 % of the damage then it is not worth worrying about, you could do more good in other places.

Posted By: jamesingramAll those 1% s make up the whole

No you can't and no they don't because you are comparing one element to a whole.

So take boiling my kettle, it takes about 40 seconds to boil enough water to make 2 cups of tea. Say I do this 10 times a day (I probably do). That will be about 1/9th of an hour at 2.8 kW or 0.30 kWh. My total daily usage is about 18 kWh at the moment. So that is 1.7% of my total usage. Not worth worrying about.

So if a carpet takes 10.7 kgCO2/kg (ICE, Nylon (Polyamide) carpet tiles, pile weight 500 g/m2) and you need 100 kg of it then that is 1070 kgCO2. Say it lasts 5 years (or gets replaced) and in that time my house has used 25 tonnes of CO2 in being heated, then that is 4%, so not really top of the list of worries.

I have a cheap parquet floor.

Posted By: jamesingramNothing cheap about parquet

Was cheaper than carpet. Trago Mills is an excellent shop for stuff like that.

Posted By: jamesingramSorry, but I think you're under valuing the effect of multiple small incremental improvements

All to do with what you measure. Take the same scenario and get a carpet with less embodies energy/CO2 (these are used as proxies for environmental damage as well as absolutes).

So if a carpet takes 6.7 kgCO2/kg (ICE, Nylon (Polyamide), pile weight 300 g/m2) and you need 60 kg of it then that is 402 kgCO2. Say it lasts 5 years (or gets replaced) and in that time my house has used 25 tonnes of CO2 in being heated, then that is 1.68%, so more than a 50% saving, but still a small amount.

This is not the same as small marginal gains, they become important when comparing two similar products (say the 500g.m^2 and the 300g/m^2 carpet) or reducing the number of cups of tea I make, but even if you banished both (so no tea or carpet), it would still only account for 6% or so of the total. A few hot baths worth.

Care must be taken when comparing extremes, I am sure a carpet made just from the finest Japanese hand reared sheep and brought by bicycle directly to my door, before being fitted by local artisans would tick a lot of the 'sustainable' boxes, but I suspect using a proxy measure of embodies CO2/Energy would tell a very different story.

Trawling through ICE is quite illuminating, should be on every 'eco' architects desktop.

When making 'sustainable' decisions, make the big decisions first (do I want carpet or is cheap parquet good enough), the little decisions become easy then.

As an aside, I remember someone who was concerned about the environmental damage that flying did. She said "I am never going to fly again" (wish I was 20 and idealist).
I asked how often she flew.
"I don't" was her reply.
So she was going to 'save the planet', by doing nothing

First place I ever went surfing in my kayak was Woolacombe. Not changed any apart from the name on the local shop has it.

We're still sold on Bamboo flooring (after the many years of planning and constructing this wee house!).

Acceptable appearance, good credentials and very hard wearing, so long life. Not too expensive as well!!

Posted By: SteamyTea We make huge assumptions about the life of something, usually assuming that it will outlast 'us' and therefore must be a good thing. Then we often try and justify the decision with some arbitrary 'recycling' regime that may, or may not, happen.

I think life of flooring is much less than most expect, not necessarily due to it reaching end of life, more due to new demand for change of look by new owner/occupier.
Regularly changed furnishings have the potential to be a decent slice of the pie in overall CO2/Energy consumption of buildings . I recon ideally we should be looking to go for lowest impact cradle to grave, as you say future recycling chain can't be relied on.

What price would you pay for the lowest environmentally damaging carpet?

Well I'd like to pay it's cost to get it to market plus a modest profit (<15%?) for those that get it their.