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There’s trouble underfoot if you’re building a green home without considering your flooring. Take stock of these sustainable wood options that let you tread lightly on the land.

You could and should invest in sustainable wood. Our expert evaluates the options available, so you'll never have to say should've, could've, would've.
flooring expert freed eric corey

It’s a familiar scenario. You’re standing in the checkout line at the supermarket watching your goods trundle down the belt toward the cash register when suddenly the checkout clerk asks, “Paper or plastic?” and you’re stuck: Do you contribute to worldwide deforestation by choosing paper, or do you select plastic and resign yourself to living on landfill?

For homeowners trying to be green while yearning for the natural look and feel of wood on their floors, the issues become ever more amplified. After all, if you’re depleting the canopy by using only one paper bag, imagine the implications of 2,000 square feet of wood flooring. That’s a lot of leafy trees.

There’s no reason, however, to hang your head in shame when selecting a wood floor, as architect Eric Corey Freed, an expert in sustainability, gently chides: “Guilt is no way to approach environmentalism. You shouldn’t feel guilty. What you should do is question where the wood for your floor comes from.”

No one wants their lovely new floor to be the cause of a rare parrot or toad’s extinction, so it’s nice to know there’s a whole spate of tree-friendly products on the market. “A lot of the woods now are rapidly renewable, meaning they’re either sustainably grown and harvested, or they’re like bamboo—a grass that can be cut and continues to grow, as much as three feet a day,” Freed explains.

In addition to the different varieties of wood, there are also different kinds of flooring options, from engineered wood (where thin strips of wood are lain over each other in alternating directions then compressed) to reclaimed wood to wood laminate (plywood with a photo of wood adhered on top)—all of which have diverse levels of green credibility.

Whatever you do, however, once your sustainable solution is installed underfoot, don’t forget to apply an earth-friendly product to its surface. “The worst thing is to have a green floor and then put some nasty oil-based toxic lacquer on it,” Freed warns. And feel free to toss your chemical cleansers; all you really need are water, white vinegar, and a mop.
 

  • neapolitan bamboo smith fong

    Neapolitan Bamboo Plywood

    Expert Opinion: Bamboo is a very hard wood. Unlike pine floors, it’s so hard that the installers complain when they’re cutting it because pushing the saw tires them out. They’re usually pretty whiney about cutting bamboo. Since this is an engineered wood, it’s even more durable than solid bamboo. I’ve seen bamboo so much that I’m sick of it—it’s a little too trendy. But the strips have been fired differently here, so you get that zebra appearance, which I think is gorgeous. I would use it everywhere. This is my favorite of all the choices, because it’s the most unusual.

    What We Think: You can’t beat the sustainable claim of using what’s essentially a very attractive weed for your floors. Although we wish it didn’t have to travel halfway across the world on an oil-chugging boat in order to be installed stateside.

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  • engineered flooring eco timber

    Engineered Flooring

    Expert Opinion: EcoTimber has been diligent in where their wood comes from. But it’s not in the nature of this company to be avant-garde. They’re positioning themselves to say, Look, we make very pretty wood; buy our pretty woods that also happen to be sustainable. It’s very traditional tongue-and-groove flooring made out of standard woods. And I think that’s fine.

    What We Think: These aren’t the most unusual or exciting options, but overall these are excellent, attractive coverings that get the job done—and do it sustainably. Good, solid workhorses of a green floor.

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  • global passage pergo

    Global Passage Collection

    What We Think: It’s not wood; it’s sawdust, a wood by-product. It’s small pieces of wood put together with toxic glues. They could change that—they could use nontoxic glues. It not only off-gasses toxic chemicals, but when you’re done with it, it ends up in the landfill. You can’t separate the wood-grain photo and the wood. It is incredibly durable, though, which is a valid environmental quality. And that’s their marketing: It’s indestructible. It’s the cockroach of wood flooring. It’s also unfortunately become the baseline for wood flooring because it’s so cheap. If you like the look of wood but don’t want to pay very much, then Pergo’s your man.

    What We Think: We’re incredibly disturbed by the idea that a photo of wood, instead of the real thing, should suffice. And we’d prefer that our floors not gas us as we sleep. But ultimately, it’s Pergo’s vast potential of sustainability untapped that turns us off.

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  • cork mosaic tile habitus

    Cork Mosaic Tiles

    Expert Opinion: Cork is the bark of a cork tree. It’s considered a rapidly renewable material because it grows back in seven years. For the most part, cork comes in either tiles or sheets. But these are wicked little circles, so you can take a very traditional material and use it in a modern way. We have cork in our kitchen, and when we drop a glass, it bounces instead of breaking. That means it’s also good on your back, since it’s a soft, resilient, cushiony floor.

    What We Think: Frank Lloyd Wright often used cork in his kitchens, and if it’s good enough for Fallingwater, it’s good enough for us. A springy floor would be most welcome while washing dishes, and the fact that cork maintains an even 70 degrees year-round is a cool-weather bonus.

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  • sustainably harvested woods plexwood

    Sustainably Harvested Woods

    Expert Opinion: You get this very modern, tight, clean striping pattern that’s fairly consistent, as opposed to the bamboo plywood, which is very much a random pattern. This almost looks like the floor of the new MoMA in how striated it is. The cool thing about Plexwood is they’ll mill it to anything you want. So you could make it into stair treads, cabinetry, flooring. It’s a European company, so they have even higher green standards to contend with than we do.

    What We Think: We’re taken with the shimmering shades of this product, available in more than 400 eye-pleasing possibilities. But our pocketbook is feeling the pinch of the current exchange rate, and purchasing our floor in euros and shipping it over from the Netherlands would be quite pricey.

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  • reclaimed wood terramai

    Reclaimed Wood

    Expert Opinion: Reclaimed wood is great, because now you can get old-growth wood that you couldn’t get before. It’s actually recycled wood: They take it off the train trestle, the barn, whatever, and mill it into flooring. I like the nail holes and little dings—it adds character. I also like that they’re somewhat seasonal—it’s akin to buying a melon. Sometimes there’s a lot of it, and sometimes there’s not. I find it charming that they don’t always offer the same things.

    What We Think: The patina of age wears well on wood, and these strips let you have centuries-old teak or rosewood without the stigma of arboreal irresponsibility. Unlike their thinner-skinned engineered wood counterparts, this flooring can be refinished as many times as you fancy without fear of sanding through the top layer

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