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Cover Feature


Above: Bamboo is one of the hardest natural materials available for flooring and is an excellent alternative to hard wood floors. The Bamboo Flooring Company offers this natural flooring in six different styles


Below: Tiger Solid Strand Woven Bamboo Flooring from the Bamboo Flooring Company is twice as hard as normal bamboo flooring and is available in the patented Uniclic design for easy installation


The laminate flooring by Pergo comes in 250 decors inspired by wood, minerals and trends and is available in nine different formats


The company’s environmental credentials


are also reflected in the composition of its wood floors. Featuring an eco-friendly, multi-layered construction, Kährs only uses high-grade hardwood for its top layer, whilst fast growing core materials are used below the joint. But this multi-layer approach is only


one way to save tropical hardwood resources. Kebony, a Norway-based producer, has developed an alternative to the unsustainable use of tropical timber for flooring. Through an innovative process that it calls ‘Kebonization’, the company is able to permanently change sustainable softwoods into hardwoods by impregnating them with a liquid derived from agricultural crop waste. Sustainable wood species, such as Southern


Yellow Pine, are thereby given the same aesthetical and physical properties as rainforest timber. The end product is durable, attractive, low maintenance and environmentally friendly.


“This technology provides a global eco-solution to the major environmental challenge of rainforest deforestation,” says Christian Jebsen, CEO of Kebony.


“BAMBOO IS A CHEAPER RAW MATERIAL SO THE FLOORS ARE AROUND A THIRD CHEAPER”


ALTERNATIVE WOODS However, when it comes to the use of hardwood for flooring, some consumers and specifiers are seeking completely different alternatives to the traditional rainforest timber. Bamboo is one of the most well known renewable resources and is a material that Redshaw identifies as being particularly green. “Bamboo plays a central role in flooring. Whether thin, wide or strand woven as wooden flooring, bamboo’s green credentials shine.” Chris Elliot, MD of the Bamboo Flooring


Company, believes that bamboo has many advantages over the more traditional hardwoods: “Bamboo is a cheaper raw material so the floors are around a third cheaper. They are as hard as oak and some - for example strand woven bamboo - are harder than any wood.”


Above: DalNaturel rubber flooring from Dalsouple boasts over 90% natural ingredients making it both environmentally friendly and sustainable


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