Home is the place where we spend most of the time, making it a friendly environment space is really worth by selecting green flooring. In EverGreen, we encourage clients to give thoughts to choose green products to save our planet and at the same time create a safe indoor air quality. When shopping for flooring products; consumers should look for products that are labelled with a certain standards and specifications such as CARB Compliance, Greengard Gold, or FSC. Those certificates indicate that the flooring products are manufactured with and release the fewest possible VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds).
There are two ways to look at green flooring products which are eco-friendly and healthy. Most of the time people are confused with those two terms, so we will try to do a definition for each of them:
Eco-friendly Flooring:
This term can be used everywhere when it comes to save our planet. In flooring, Eco friendly simply means the flooring products which are renewable, and natural; also the wood harvested based on a certain standards without destroying forests. There are other factors that affect the eco-friendly of flooring materials such as Manufacturing, transporting, and life cycle. If you are looking for green products there are many sustainable environmental friendly floor choices to your home. Two major certification in this area are Green Seal and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Healthy Flooring Products:
This term is mostly focuses on improving indoor air quality. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicates that indoor pollutants level can be two to five times higher than they are outside. The off gassing of flooring products can be harmful in your home, so you should look for products with lowest VOCs. The two most harmful substance are formaldehyde and phthalate which might take a long time to dissipate in your home. Formaldehyde is mostly common in composite wood flooring such as engineered wood, laminate, and bamboo. To mitigate that you should look for products with NAUF or CARB Phase 2 Compliant, and Greengard Gold.
