For a more environmentally friendly home try using cork flooring tiles
Wednesday, 16 March 2011 7:23 PM
These days, being green is something of a multinational crusade. All over the world, people are thinking about their carbon footprints, how to save energy, ways they can recycle things and methods of conserving resources.
Doing all this may involve a wide range of actions, be it carbon offsetting when flying overseas, driving a hybrid car, installing extra insulation or attaching solar panels to the house.
But as well as carbon footprints, it is what lies below our real feet that may make a difference.
There are many ways of making a floor greener. Some may involve having synthetic materials with fewer volatile organic compounds - which pollute the air we breathe - than used to be the case. Recycled material can also play a part. Wood can be sourced from sustainable forests and most good suppliers do just this. But cork may be the best material of all.
While new trees may be planted when existing ones are felled for timber, cork floorboards are made from material that will not kill the tree when harvested. This is because it comes from the bark of the cork tree, which can be stripped without killing the plant.
Instead, it grows back and can be harvested again in less than a decade. With cork containing no synthetic materials that may be harmful to the environment or add significantly to carbon footprints in the manufacturing stage, there are few materials that can match it for eco-friendliness.
The only exceptions to this rule would be bamboo - because it is a grass that can similarly be harvested by trimming and then re-harvested when it grows back - and wool carpets, as these are from that great renewable source of organic material, the sheep. Of course, a truly eco-friendly home may have all of these. But in many rooms the softness of cork underfoot may make it greatly preferable to bamboo, while the ability to deal with spillages, stains and impacts will make it an appropriate substance to lay down in places one would not put a carpet, such as kitchens.
In addition to this, cork flooring tiles may be attached using cork flooring adhesives that are low on volatile organic compounds, to make sure the floor is not harmful.
Cork is a tough but soft, warm but quiet, beautiful and insulating material. These alone would all be qualities making it a worthy flooring material. That it is as green as any substance in existence provides another great reason to install it.
