Dilemma: you love the look of Douglas- fir or Alder flooring but you want to be sure you’re picking a product that’s not harmful to the environment. Do these wood floors fit the bill? Isn’t cutting down trees bad for the planet?
In truth, there are a lot of factors that go into determining how environmentally-friendly any product is. There are a few things to consider regarding flooring. To start, where does the flooring come from? Carpet, vinyl flooring or engineered wood products might be made of components produced in various locations, shipped to China, assembled in a factory, and then shipped back across the ocean to us. There are a lot of miles built into that product.
Douglas-fir and Alder are native to the West Coast of Canada. If you’ve hiked a trail anywhere west of the Rockies, chances are you’ve seen Douglas-fir and Alder growing in its native environment.
Knowing where your wood comes from is important—according to the Forestry Stewardship Council, wood that comes from certain regions—especially Eastern Europe, Latin America, China and Southeast Asia—is often logged illegally, then processed and exported to North America as products like plywood and decking.
Bamboo and cork, often praised as eco-friendly choices because the plants they come from replenish much more quickly than trees used for other wood floors, lose out to Douglas fir and Alder flooring when it comes to the energy used to transport and manufacture them from their tropical origins to our homes.
When you’re weighing out the environmental pros and cons of a purchase, you also need to think about how long what you’re buying is going to last. You don’t have to be an environmental scientist to realize that a floor that endures for a lifetime is a more sustainable choice than one that needs to be replaced every 1 or 2 decades. Every time a floor is replaced, resources are used in manufacturing, shipping and installation. The average synthetic-fiber carpet will last about 15 years, while a higher-quality wool carpet could last 20-30. A vinyl floor, depending on the quality, can last anywhere from 10-30 years. A Douglas fir or Alder floor will last up to 100 years, sometimes more.
When you buy wood flooring, you know you’ve got a product that will most likely last the lifetime of your house. That one-time purchase is a more economical buy, both for your pocketbook and the environment.
Many household products contain volatile organic compounds, commonly known as VOCs. A VOC is any substance that contains carbon and readily “off-gases “or turns into a vapor at room temperature. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, VOCs can have both long and short-term health effects and VOC levels are often two to five times higher indoors than outdoors. Carpets, vinyl flooring and other building materials are among the many substances that emit VOCs. Carpet fibers are often coated in chemicals to repel stains or moisture, and the carpet pads they rest on and the adhesives used during installation emit VOCs as well. Bamboo flooring is held together with resins made from fossil fuel based products and will continue to off-gas harmful chemicals into your living space as long as you have this floor down. Most Bamboo flooring manufactures will not even tell you how high their VOCs are.
Real wood flooring gives off no harmful VOCs, it is a natural safe product. Today’s new environmentally-friendly, low-VOC natural oil finishes are available for your wood floor to further reduce the amount of indoor air pollution.
Carpets are also known to trap dust, dirt, and allergens within their fibers—with a wood floor, a quick sweeping and cleaning removes the dust and allergens from the home. For people with allergies or asthma, having a floor that you know isn’t emitting chemicals or storing pollutants is a literal breath of fresh air.
Wood, by its very nature is a green material. It’s non-toxic, recyclable, grows naturally and it doesn’t take any extra energy to manufacture. While illegal logging and deforestation is a concern worldwide, our Douglas-fir and Alder flooring comes from only savaged timber or carefully managed private woodlots.
So if making the perfect choice for a green home is weighing on your mind, fret no more. You can have beautiful Douglas- fir or Alder floors and peace of mind too: they are a responsible choice for maintaining a healthy planet.
