5 Surprising Eco-Friendly Facts about Wood Flooring

Here at Chez Green we favour wooden floors.

Wooden floors are easier to clean than carpets and there are no nasty surprises hiding in wooden flooring, unlike carpets which harbour all sorts of germs and dirt.

Deciding which flooring to use in your home is not only a difficult decision to make with all the options available, but it’s expensive too, so it’s important to get it right.

Check out these interesting eco friendly facts and let me know what you think!

Easily recycled

Wooden floors are easily recyclable at the end of their useful life. You can either take them to your local household recycling centre or reuse the wood in other ways.

In our garden we have several planters that Mr Green has made from old floor boards; I use these to grow carrots in as our soil is too heavy for them to grow successfully in the ground!

Not only can wooden flooring be recycled, but it’s long-lasting and recyclable in its own way, as it can be brought back to life simply by sanding it down and re-finishing it.

Cork – renewable materials

One of the most environmentally-friendly flooring products is cork flooring. All the raw materials used are natural and sustainable, as the cork and wood fibres that are used in the floors are completely renewable.

As a resource, cork is a particularly green product as it is regenerative. Every 9 years a cork tree’s bark can be peeled without damaging the tree itself in any way.

Thermal qualities

With rising fuel prices, we’re all looking for ways to reduce energy consumption, as central heating is one of the biggest costs in a home.

We all know we should insulate walls and ceilings, but did you know the floors should be insulated too?

The nature of cork flooring – a product containing millions of air cells – gives it thermal qualities and so it much warmer and softer than most flooring types.

Laminate flooring is sustainable?

I was surprised to learn that over 90% of laminate flooring is made up of raw material wood.

Leading manufacturers only tend to use waste wood that comes from sustainable forestry operations, ensuring that rainforests are protected.

Furthermore, the waste materials from laminate floor production are used by manufacturers to create chipboard which can then be used for furniture.

Reducing energy consumption

Something I’ve talked about in the past is the amount of energy used when vacuuming. If you have wooden flooring, you can use a brush and mop which requires no electricity at all!

Unlike carpets, wood flooring won’t need to be deep cleaned after spillages, so again it reduces the energy that carpet cleaning equipment uses to bring them back to life.

What about you – what sort of flooring do you have at home and would you change it if you had the option?