Climate change has many of us becoming more environmentally conscious in our everyday lives. From switching the car to public transport or bicycles to looking for ways to save energy at home, we’re all looking for eco-friendly solutions. One of the best ways to making your home more eco-friendly is to install a wood floor. Wood floors are very environmentally friendly and this post brings you some of the key features that make wood flooring a great sustainable choice for your home.
Sustainable Resource
Wood is renewable resource that can be continuously and responsibly produced. Trees that are cut for flooring are immediately replaced with new trees thanks to environment conscious forestry management. This means that the amount of trees remains at a constant and the replacement of older trees with younger ones is greatly beneficial to air quality. This is because younger trees are able to absorb more carbon dioxide than older trees, improving the atmospheric output.
Small Carbon Footprint
It is a common belief that cutting down trees requires a lot of energy, but this is actually not true. The production of wood floor uses five times less energy than what is needed to create a ton of cement. You can actually reduce your own carbon footprint by choosing specific floors. You could choose a wood that has been produced in United Kingdom or in a close nearby country. By doing this, you reduce the fuel emissions produced by the transport in the delivery process.
Eco-Friendly Species
Among the different wood floorings that exist you can find some that are more sustainable than others. The rule to follow is that the more common the wood, the more sustainable it is. The wood that most likely spring to mind therefore is oak flooring. Arguably the most well known, native tree to England, oak is quickly reproduced to keep up with demand. But there are actually two species that are even more environmental friendly. Both bamboo and cork regenerate and grow incredibly quickly, so can be grown and replaced twice as fast.
If you’re unsure if a floor is sustainable or not always look for the FSC certification. FSC stands for “Forest Stewardship Council”. This is an independent organisation that works to create more responsibly managed forests across the world. By buying a wood floor with this certification, you’re making sure that the wood has been responsibly sourced. Most floors adhere to this, but its worth checking just in case.
By choosing a wood floor you are investing in a durable and beautiful material that is unlikely to ever need replacing in your lifetime. Other kinds of floors may be less expensive, but because of their poorer quality, you will need to replace them more than once. Carpet is a great example of this. This increases your carbon footprint as the energy and materials used to produce a carpet will far overtake the one-off energy used to create your wood floor that lasts for years and years.