Eco Friendly Flooring

Wood is the only renewable choice of building material for flooring. Plastics are derived from fossil fuels, concrete and other forms of flooring can damage our environment through the energy it takes for their production.

Wood is a renewable, natural resource that naturally grows in abundance. England was once covered by lush green forests.

Even though we’ve cut most of it down, our forefathers had the sense to replant large forests. Despite this, we don’t get a lot of our flooring from our own resources in the UK.

Most of our country’s Oak flooring now comes from Europe, including the extensive forests of North America.

All of these countries have programmes of replanting and maintaining sustainable forests. In many cases the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) or PEFC™ certification helps to ensure that forest are responsibly managed.

Carbon Footprints

The production of wood flooring uses less energy in its processing methods than any other construction material.

For example, it takes 5 times more energy to produce 1 tonne of cement, 24 times more energy for 1 tonne of steel, and 126 times for 1 tonne of aluminium.

Young trees also absorb more carbon dioxide than mature ones, so it makes sense to harvest older trees and plant two new ones for every one tree felled.

This is why The Solid Wood Flooring Company is a member of the Timber Trade Federation

Engineered wood flooring should now be the only choice for any floor. This is because for every 100 m2 of solid wood flooring, you can get 400 m2 of engineered flooring.

The main positive points for using an engineered floor are:

• Engineered floors don’t move like solid wood floors
• We can produce 4 times as much engineered flooring, compared to solid oak floors
• Engineered flooring can be used with underfloor heating, whereas solid wood can’t
• The plywood base of an engineered floor is made up of layers of Birch and sometimes with a mix of Poplar
• Both of these fast growing trees are in abundance and are easily replaced, helping to reduce our carbon footprint even further
• Our engineered wood floors with a 5 mm solid top layer can be sanded down the same number of times as a solid wood floor. This is due the distance from the top of the tongue.

Our Certifications:

If you require a record of our ethical sourcing policies please see the links below for our certificates:

FSC Certificate