Ever think that you'd want to use a sustainable floor? You typically think of stone and porcelain tile, carpet, and wood flooring. Check out these gorgeous, updated, and equally luxurious products that will make you feel good about your choice from a design, Eco-friendly, and durability standpoint.
1) Terrazzo is a highly durable flooring material that is made with marble chips or other fine aggregates, held in a binder of cement or epoxy-resin. It is typically used in high traffic installations due to its resilience and longevity. Because of its mixed composition, incorporation of post-consumer and pre-consumer recycle content such as glass, marble and cement is a natural fit. in 1999 DEX Terrazzo was founded and focused on creating concrete products that show off the flexibility of concrete while reducing the environmental impact of the material. Their DEXterra is comprised of decorative aggregates that are bound with cement which is then exposed and polished with industrial diamond polishing equipment. Many of the available aggregates are recycled post-consumer glass from the Atlanta area. Rather than recycling glass by melting it down, recycled aggregate is simply cleaned, crushed, and mixed with the binder, thus reducing the energy needed to recycle the glass. DEXterra comes in a wide variety of colors with a diversity of aggregate sizes that range from a monotone surface to a highly patterned surface.
2) Coconuts have invaded our lives lately with the onslaught of the coconut water fad. The city is mobbed with coconut water trucks and the grocery stores have replaced their varieties of enhanced water with a naturally “enhanced water.” A positive outcome of the coconut water invasion is the excess of full grown coconut palms which are no longer nut producing. Coconut palm plantations are in abundance throughout much of the world and are often focused around areas with endangered rain forests. (Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia) Durapalm hopes to make palmwood a standard building material and deflect harvesting from other rain forest woods. Palmwood can vary in color from dark to medium-red mahogany with an exotic grain that is reminiscent of bamboo. Durapalm palmwood comes in flooring, plywood, paneling and veneer that is durable and formaldehyde free.
3) Aluminum is a great product for recycling as we have seen in other products. AlumaFloor is a recycled aluminum flooring product made from 17.21% post consumer recycled material and 33.35% post industrial recycled material. To further its sustainable qualities, at the end of its life span, AlumaFloor is 100% recyclable. Aluminum recycling is important because manufacturing products from raw aluminum takes a lot of energy and produces air and water pollution. Recycled aluminum uses 5% of the energy necessary to process raw aluminum and creates 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution.
AlumaFloor has a simple, neutral look that is useful in many applications. The product is very durable with an estimated life span of 100 years. In the case of AlumaFloor, it is more likely the building will be torn down before the flooring wears out.