Hardwood Flooring: The Environmentally Friendly Flooring Option

At first thought, you may think hardwood flooring is not the most environmentally friendly option for flooring in your home. One may picture entire swathes of forests being levelled and harvested in order to put under your feet in your home. And while in some places this may be true, the majority, if not all, the hardwood flooring that comes from Europe and North America is harvested from sustainably managed forests. 

You may be asking "what is a sustainably managed forest". Well, this is a forest where a company may be allowed to harvest trees from, but has a legal obligation to replant trees in the areas that it harvests them from.

Contrary to other types of flooring, hardwood is a natural material that stores carbon as it grows. As you may know, trees use carbon dioxide from the air to form cellulose, the building block of the plant cell. Trees store this carbon dioxide as cellulose in increasing amounts as they grow each year. Harvesting trees does not release this stored carbon dioxide back into the air and actually acts as a 'sink' for the greenhouse gas, meaning that less of it is present in the atmosphere as a result. If forests are sustainably managed and allowed to regrow after harvesting, there is a net absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If we compare hardwood to plastic-containing flooring materials such as carpet, carpet requires the use of fossil fuels to form plastics and other ingredients to form the end product. This gives hardwood the upperhand as the more eco-friendly alternative because not only is it natural and free of plastic products, it is a carbon dioxide sink and better for the environment in comparison. Thus, hardwood is the eco-friendly alternative for any homeowner.

Our Wildwood Nature, Antique, and Westcoast lines all use European White Oak hardwood that is sourced directly from Europe. 

 We also carry a variety of hardwood from manufacturers in North America, including Indiana Hardwood and