Brought to you by Casa Madera Hardwood Floors – a Greater Vancouver hardwood flooring company and American Hardwood Information Centre

Whether you’re an architect, designer, materials specifier or home owner, you make choices every day that not only impact the quality of your life, but impact the environment.  Whether selecting hardwood flooring over carpeting, natural materials versus synthetic, or replacing older appliances with energy efficient ones, our choices have long-term effects on the liveability of planet Earth. Therefore, we all need to be knowledgeable about our options.

A number of studies have been done on the environmental impacts of hardwoods. In 2007-2008, the National Wood Flooring Association Industry Research Foundation conducted a life cycle analysis of wood flooring in conjunction with the Consortium for Research on Renewable Materials (CORRIM), in Madison, Wisconsin. The study evaluated solid strip hardwood flooring compared to other flooring alternatives, such as vinyl, linoleum and carpet, with regard to air emissions, energy use, water use, and product service life, finding solid hardwood flooring to be desirable from an environmental impact standpoint, a conclusion that is consistent with previous studies in Europe.

The CORRIM study concluded that wood flooring has the least environmental impact of all other flooring options studied. This was based on several factors:

• Comparatively benign air emissions. Wood flooring was shown to have no emissions for methane, nitrogen oxide and other particulates, and minimal emissions for carbon dioxide.
• Comparatively less water consumption. Solid hardwood flooring and generic vinyl composition tile use substantially less water than other alternatives, with water use for production of hardwood flooring confined on-site to boilers for facility heating.
• Comparatively less total primary energy use. Of the five floor coverings considered, solid hardwood flooring uses the least amount of primary energy in manufacturing.
• Long service life and desirable end-oflife scenarios. Hardwood flooring may be recycled or combusted as wood fuel, representing an advantage to the environment over other disposal scenarios.
• Renewable nature of the raw wood input.
• Carbon neutral benefits associated with wood as a material.

Some hardwood floors are now offered with a click-lock, glueless tongue-and-groove locking system. No messy glues or nails needed. We will probably see even more in the near future.