THE BETTER WAY
Ian Spreadborough, co-founder and director of IOBAC, discusses the advances in adhesive-free flooring installation and its benefits - from supporting material reuse, to offering increased design flexibility and lifetime value.
When it comes to specifying commercial interiors, we’re told that the ‘take-make-dispose’ days of thinking are thankfully over. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen a real increase in architects, designers and clients wanting to explore solutions that enable ease of disassembly and material reuse to contribute towards ESG targets.
Due to the absence of contamination, installing flooring using adhesive-free methods means that both the floorcoverings and subfloor are completely recoverable and can be easily reused or recycled.
Not only is that beneficial to the environment, but as the flooring is cleanly and easily uplifted, designs can be much more agile and better suited to today’s changing spaces. And when you also consider the financial benefits that this method offers, then it’s clear to see why specifiers are increasingly choosing adhesive-free as the better way to install flooring.
BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT It’s estimated that buildings have 30-40 fit outs during their lifecycle with around 300 tonnes of fit-out waste going to landfill every day.
Floorcoverings contaminated with adhesive are often sent for incineration or landfill after just one use. In fact, research by the Changing Markets Foundation concluded that an area the size of Birmingham, UK is thrown away every year, just in carpet alone.
But when flooring is installed adhesive-free, it enables the material to have a second life, facilitating flooring take back
36 | ADHESIVE-FREE FLOORING
and recycling schemes such as Tarkett’s ReStart programme. Plus, the subfloor, typically metal raised access flooring, requires little remediation or cleaning before being reused. And by reusing materials and reducing waste in this way, we reduce associated embodied carbon.
Sustainability assessment methods such as BREEAM and SKA rating recognise this contribution towards circularity, awarding credits for reuse of flooring materials and waste reduction.
And the recent Circular Buildings Toolkit developed by Arup and Ellen MacArthur Foundation advocates ʻreversible connections’ such as adhesive-free installation, as there is no damage to individual elements, so they can be reused.
Achieving a SKA silver rating on all installed products was a key driver for a recent fit-out for a major car manufacturer’s international headquarters in London, with IOBAC adhesive- free installation specified by both the building owner Landsec and design consultants Thirdway.
For ease and speed of installation, the contractor, Delta Commercial Flooring, needed an adhesive-free installation method for raised metal access flooring that was compatible with all flooring specified: luxury vinyl tiles from Tarkett, carpet tiles from Desso and woven vinyl tiles from Bolon.
This project used our new MT4+ MagTabs, which are thinner, lighter, yet stronger than ever before. Magnetic on one side and self-adhesive on the other, these smart little tabs not only hold the flooring tiles vertically to the subfloor, but also interlock the tiles horizontally for unrivalled two-dimensional hold.
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