Eco-friendly flooring

Bamboo
Bamboo has become the poster child for environmentally friendly flooring, but not all bamboo is created environmentally equal. This giant woody grass is very fast growing, requiring only five years from seedling to harvest, and it resprouts from the clump, so that cutting down the stalk does not kill the plant. However, cultivation and processing may create other problems, ranging from the quality of the resin used to bind the planks and the distance it has to travel to your supplier, to the possibility that other trees were displaced to plant bamboo groves.

Carpeting
In some ways, “environmentally friendly carpeting” is an oxymoron. Carpeting traps dirt, dust and other allergens (though whether this is bad or actually a health benefit is a matter of debate), and synthetic carpeting can outgas, with unknown effects both for you and the environment in general. On the other hand, natural fibres have their own issues — for example, conditions in the original sheep farms or wool fibre factories. However, the synthetic fibre industry has made strides both in producing the product more responsibly at the factory level, and reducing outgassing. Also, at least one Canadian company, Nylene Canada, takes back old carpet and recycles it.

Cork
Cork has a number of advantages from an environmental standpoint. Like bamboo, it’s renewable, but in a different way: cork bark is peeled from a living tree, which is not harmed and continues to grow. Since the bark is ground up and reconstituted to make everything from wine corks to shoe soles, there is little waste; while recycling facilities do not exist in Canada, cork is routinely recycled in Europe, so the technology may appear here someday.

Linoleum
Linoleum is the granddaddy of environmentally sustainable flooring. Invented in the late 1800s from a mixture of linseed oil, pine resins and sawdust, it’s biodegradable, organic and hygienic. And, far from the ugly rubbery-looking floors in our old school classrooms, it’s become fashionable again as a contemporary artistic statement and comes in a wide variety of stock and custom colours.

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