Sustainability: New Developments and Producer Highlights

PRODUCER HIGHLIGHTS 
Interface, a green leader since the earliest days of sustainability in flooring, is working hard to meet its goal, just six years away, of attaining a zero environmental footprint. One area where it has made huge strides is in water usage. When the firm eliminated its dyeing processes and switched to solution-dyed fiber, it reduced water consumption per square yard of carpet to six ounces. And that includes all the water embodied in the material throughout the chain of custody. Employee water use from sinks and toilets is higher than water usage in production.

As of the end of 2013, per unit of production, water usage was down 83% since 1996, energy use was down 39%, greenhouse gas emissions were down 71%, and waste sent to landfill was down 94%. Since 1995, the firm has diverted over 287 million pounds of material from landfills. And since 2008, the average carbon footprint on its carpet tiles is down 25%. Also, 49% of its total raw materials, globally, are either recycled or bio-based.

These metrics illustrate how the biggest challenge lies with energy use. Interface gets 35% of its energy from renewable sources, but it’s having more success in Europe than in the U.S. due to higher fossil fuel energy prices in Europe (and therefore the stronger drive to develop alternatives). Its European facility uses a biomass generator that can take anything from fish guts to bio-waste from agricultural processes and turn it into the equivalent of natural gas—which then goes into a natural gas grid. In Georgia, Interface has been using methane from landfills since 2005.

Aquafil, which is headquartered in Italy, has three European extrusion facilities, as well as one in China and another in Cartersville, Georgia—which is currently undergoing an expansion. Its depolymerization facility in Slovenia produces about 45 million pounds of fully recycled caprolactam every year, and the firm is boosting that output with technological improvements and an improved procurement policy that yields reclaimed nylon with a higher purity.

Fishnets, most of which come from Norway, are a major source of nylon 6 for Aquafil, and earlier this summer the firm installed new equipment to remove coating material prior to depolymerization. 

Also, the firm is starting up its reclamation operation in Cartersville this month, partnering with local collectors to recapture nylon 6 carpet, which Aquafil will shear and send to Slovenia as high purity feedstock. About 50% of product from Slovenia goes to the U.S. market.

The firm also gets fishing nets from the Net-Works program, which works with fishing communities in the Philippines (see box on page 38). It’s smaller volume, but the quality is high. Volumes should increase as the program is rolled out.

The big news at Shaw Industries, the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, is that it is building a second Evergreen recycling facility. The first facility, which came to Shaw through its Honeywell acquisition, is in Augusta, Georgia, and it is designed to process nylon 6. The new facility, in Ringgold, Georgia, will be able to process all fiber types, including PET. And according to the firm, the high purity PET that will come out of Evergreen Ringgold should help increase its value in end-use markets.

To date, Shaw has recycled over 700 million pounds of carpet, and the new facility, which should start operating mid-year 2015, will significantly boost reclamation volumes.

Shaw’s sustainability philosophy includes the three pillars of sustainability—social, economic and environmental—with innovation as the engine that drives all three forward. One of its environmental commitments is to use materials that are as green as possible, and the firm has put a big focus on sourcing, and it now has a sustainable sourcing manager to work closely with suppliers.

About 65% of Shaw’s product offering is cradle-to-cradle certified—99% of its commercial offering is certified, as well as almost all of its hardwood and all of its Anso nylon residential lines. 

The firm recently installed a solar array at Plant 15, the firm’s main carpet tile facility in Cartersville, Georgia. The one-megawatt power plant supplies 7% to 12% of the power when the facility is fully running. Last year, the firm achieved reductions in energy intensity (per unit of finished product), and greenhouse gas emissions intensity was about flat. 

Mannington, the world leader in LVT, also produces VCT, sheet vinyl, hardwood, laminate, commercial carpet and rubber sheet and tile. The privately owned firm, headquartered in Salem, New Jersey, focuses its sustainability efforts on both product and process, and that includes a massive solar array that generates close to a million kilowatt hours. It has been reclaiming carpet for years, recapturing carpet tile for internal reuse and working with the collector network. 

Mannington also reclaims VCT on the East Coast for reuse in its Salem facility, and has recently launched an LVT reclamation program to work with customers and its contract dealer partners to reclaim LVT, which is a higher value material than VCT. And it is currently working on its plasticizers to ensure they meet the demands of environmentally focused specifiers, with developments anticipated in the next few months.

The largest flooring manufacturer in the world, Mohawk Industries, has been focusing its green efforts on transparency—its goal is to be the most transparent flooring firm. To that end, it has rolled out several EPDs and HPDs, and has started using Declare labels to demonstrate the health and safety of its product ingredients. 

The firm is an Angel sponsor of the International Living Future Institute, which operates the Living Building Challenge (and produces the Declare labels). The Living Building Challenge is a green building certification program that attempts to define the most advanced measure of sustainability and “acts to rapidly diminish the gap between current limits and the end-game positive solutions [it] seeks.” 

Mohawk has also strengthened its relationship with GreenWizard, a product management platform that allows users looking for product to quickly and easily filter for whatever sustainability attributes they require. Mohawk has entered into a three-year “Emerald Partnership” with GreenWizard.

The big challenge for Mohawk is that it has grown substantially in the last couple of years through its acquisitions (totaling close to $2 billion), which include Pergo and Marazzi. Mohawk is a $7.7 billion company now, with huge international assets, and it has to manage all those disparate entities in a cohesive environmental program. Its product ratio has also shifted, with carpet and ceramic now about the same size.

The firm has also launched a comprehensive commercial LVT program. Its Why Y line uses soy-based plasticizers while Hot & Heavy offers high post-consumer and post-industrial content.

Last year, it achieved reductions in energy intensity (in units per net sales), greenhouse gas intensity, water intensity and waste to landfill intensity. The goal is to reduce all four categories 25% over 2009 levels by 2020. The firm has made progress on all fronts, and it’s on track to hit its water intensity mark in the next couple of years.

One of the most progressive flooring companies in terms of sustainability is Forbo, which makes vinyl and linoleum flooring, along with smaller volumes of carpet tile and Flotex flocked nylon sheet and tile. Most of its North American business is in linoleum. 

The firm’s 2013 sustainability report emphasizes a consolidated focus on human health and wellbeing as the compass that will be used to guide the company into the future. According to Tim Cole, the firm’s head of sustainability, human health is the number one concern worldwide, and people spend 70% to 90% of their lives in the built environment, making these interior settings and the materials that go into them inordinately important to human health. The corporate philosophy, currently in the strategic development phase, will lead to concrete new measures next year. 

Forbo has been at the vanguard of transparency declaration. The firm not only does EPDs and HPDs but it also fully discloses its lifecycle assessments. And it also participates in Usetox, a scientific consensus model that assesses the lifecycle of the product and its human toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts.

Tarkett, which manufactures vinyl and rubber sheet and tile, linoleum and commercial carpet, has been working with the Environmental Protection & Encouragement Agency (EPEA), founded by Michael Braungart. Tarkett hosted a presentation by Braungart at NeoCon in Chicago, where he outlined, among other things, a vision for sustainable PVC, based in part on focusing PVC on long-term products like flooring, pipes and window frames, and away from short-term disposable uses—an essential step in a true cradle-to-cradle strategy.

Tarkett is using the EPEA’s environmental health statements to disclose its cradle-to-cradle material assessment and has published an EPD on its linoleum offering. Most of its other resilient products are covered by generic EPDs. Tarkett has moved away from phthalate plasticizers, and has just about completed the transition with its North American products. The firm is working to boost its VCT reclamation program by partnering with its distributors to return material, including installation waste and installed materials.

Tarkett’s Tandus Centiva division includes a substantial commercial carpet operation that has long been a green leader, and its Dalton recycling facility channels reclaimed carpet into its ER3 backing. Earlier this year, it launched its first carpet collection using Econyl nylon 6 with high post-industrial and post-consumer content. On the LVT side, by the end of this year all of its lines will be phthalate-free.

Earlier this year, Bentley Mills officially rolled out its new hard-back polyolefin carpet tile line, Afirma, which is cradle to cradle certified and in the process of getting an EPD. The firm’s cushion-back tile and broadloom have both cradle to cradle certification and EPDs. And all of the firm’s products are Red List Ready, a designation from the Living Building Challenge that affirms its 14 Red List materials and chemicals are not present in Bentley’s products.

Looking ahead, Bentley is focusing renewed attention on its manufacturing operation. The firm, which manufactures in drought-ridden California, has already made huge strides in water reduction, but it has goals to reduce water even more in 2014, along with goals for reduction of electricity and natural gas.

Beaulieu’s commercial operation, Bolyu, includes broadloom, carpet tile, a nonwoven PET tile called Level and LVT. The LVT comes from Asian manufacturing partnerships, and the soft surface products are all made inhouse. The firm has a lab in Shanghai through which it runs all of its LVT products for testing and quality control checks. Beaulieu also recently renewed its NSF-140 Platinum certification for its carpet tile.

The firm has created EPDs for its broadloom, carpet tile and Level programs, but is waiting to release them pending the completion of an EPD for its latest line, Intermix carpet tile. A portion of the fiber used in Intermix comes from reclaimed yarns—from the small lots left over from production runs or on cones—product that would otherwise have been remelted (at a higher energy cost) and recycled into other yarns. Repurposing it avoids that additional environmental burden. The multi-colored striping generated by the random reclaimed yarns also creates a distinctive look. 

Invista, which is best known for its Stainmaster residential nylon 6,6 and commercial Antron nylon 6,6, has a sustainability strategy that is first and foremost based on the performance and longevity of its products. According to the firm, its Antron fiber can last 75% longer than most of its competition.

The firm has expanded its capacity for production of Antron Lumena solution-dyed nylon with TruBlend fiber, which offers 30% recycled content in a mix of post-industrial and post-consumer. The expansion is taking place at the firm’s Camden, South Carolina extrusion facility.

The firm’s research and development team is working on bio-derived processes for making the industrial chemicals used for nylon intermediates and feedstocks, which could result in nylon with bio-based content.

Ecore, the largest domestic user of scrap tire rubber, converts over 75 million pounds of tires every year into rubber flooring. In May, the firm was awarded a patent for “laminated interlocking surfacing systems with a recycled rubber backing.” Ecore creates these products through its Itstru technology, which fusion bonds Ecore’s rubber backing to a variety of floorcoverings, including vinyl, linoleum, carpet and even artificial turf.

The firm is currently in the process of preparing EPDs and HPDs for several of its product lines, including EcoSurfaces, Everlast, EcoMax, EcoRx and several others. The EPDs and HPDs should be completed in the next month or two.

Universal Fibers is shifting its environmental certification strategy to offer more transparency. The firm is pursuing GreenCircle Certification, which includes lifecycle assessments, renewable resource content, recycled content, recyclable material and other environmental attributes.

Universal has also increased the published post-industrial content for Refresh nylon 6,6 from 20% to 30%. Post-consumer content makes up another 10%. The firm is headquartered in Bristol, Virginia, where it operates its ISO 14001 certified North American manufacturing facility. The firm also has facilities in China and Thailand.

J+J Flooring Group, which makes broadloom and carpet tile for the commercial market, has published EPDs on every one of its standard products, and it is working on HPDs for its full line as well. Also, the firm has partnered with GreenWizard to list its products’ environmental attributes on its streamlined system.

The firm has announced that it’s ahead of schedule for being zero waste to landfill. In 2013, 99.7% of all raw materials were recycled or turned into products, leaving only 0.3% of total material purchases going to landfill.

J+J’s Paradigm Shift collection, which repurposes yarn left over from manufacturing runs, has to date recaptured over one million pounds of yarn. And its Kinetex PET tile production has been moved from Virginia to Dalton, Georgia, which reduces the environmental impact of the product. And, according to the firm, it has successfully turned Kinetex’s “waste stream” back into PET fibers. 

Earlier this year, Tennessee based Crossville, the largest privately owned domestic porcelain producer, crossed the 40 million pound mark for fired porcelain diverted from landfills. The take-back program includes Tile Take-Back, which recycles material like scraps and previously installed tile through its distribution network, and its partnership with Toto USA, a major sanitaryware producer that sends its fired porcelain waste to Crossville. Tile Take-Back accepts post-consumer tile from other brands and projects not originating from Crossville.

In 2013, Crossville diverted from landfills over 7.7 million pounds of fired scrap from its own facilities, which it ground up and reused, along with nearly 7.3 million pounds of scrap from Toto and 87,400 pounds of scrap and post-consumer tile from renovation projects.

The firm, which is a net consumer of waste, also offers a surface treatment called Hydrotect that can improve air quality, and all of the products made at its Tennessee facilities are Green Squared certified.

This summer, Armstrong’s North American VCT reclamation program passed the six million pound mark in product diverted from landfill and recycled into new product. Reclaimed product is channeled to three Armstrong facilities in North America—Kankakee, Illinois; Jackson, Mississippi; and South Gate, California. The firm reports that reclamation volumes are steady, and what’s limiting growth right now is mostly awareness. Getting the word out to clients and large end-users should help generate more growth.

Armstrong is rolling out EPDs for its resilient products. So far, it has published EPDs for its linoleum, VCT and BBT (PVC-free polyester composition tile with 3% bio-based content). LVT will likely be next. The firm’s Armstrong Product Declarations offer a list of product ingredients, along with an overview of the environmental impacts in its EPDs and other sustainability information, including contributions to LEED points.

Milliken Carpet, which is part of the Milliken family of companies, a carbon-negative manufacturer certified by Leonardo Academy, has reacted quickly to the demand for transparency in the market. The firm published EPDs on all of its standard North American carpet tile last year, and this year it added HPDs. It also offers Declare labels for its North American commercial tile, along with its soft-back Chinese-made collections, and all of its floorcoverings are certified NSF-140 Gold or Platinum.

The firm has used landfill methane and company-owned hydroelectricity generation for several years, and in 2013 it increased use from 38% to 46%. Also, the firm’s carpet landfill diversion program, established in 2012, has to date diverted over 685,000 pounds, including 495,000 this year alone.

The firm offers collections using Econyl recycled fiber. Its Inis Mor collection, for instance, features Econyl fiber and a cushion backing, and has a total recycled content of 44%.

Universal Textile Technologies, which is known for its EnviroCel and BioCel polyurethane backings with bio-based and recycled content, also operates Tri-Polymer Recycling, which was originally developed to recycle polyurethane, and it now specializes in multi-plastic byproduct recycling. Artificial turf is its biggest source of reclaimed material.

The firm’s polyurethane backings are made by reacting a polyol with a petroleum derived isocyanate and combining it with filler of calcium and recycled coal fly ash. The polyol contains high bio-based content. And the secondary backing is made from 100% post-consumer PET from drink bottles.

Florida Tile has added three new lines—Maltese, Marquis and Continent—that are Green Squared certified and offer 40% recycled content. And it has updated its digital inkjet printing technology and moved to more environmentally friendly inks. And all of the exhaust from its kilns goes through scrubbers, which virtually eliminates emissions of hydrogen fluoride, a hazardous gas.

The firm reuses byproduct and waste from its production process. It sends fired and unfired porcelain through a $100,000 grinding machine—in the last 12 months it has recaptured 17 million pounds of unfired tile and 7.5 million pounds of fired tile. And it has recycled 100% of its waste water—over 2.6 million gallons.

Roppe renewed all of its NSF-332 and FloorScore certifications over the last year, and it is currently in the process of meeting the compliance prerequisites for LEED v4. The firm’s Impact recycling program, which repurposes reclaimed rubber flooring, continues to make year over year gains.

Ceramica d’Imola rolled out seven new products across all three brands—Leonardo, Imola and LaFaenza—all of which have Green Squared certification. In total, Ceramica d’Imola has 60 products with Green Squared, certified by Scientific Certification Systems. 

Expanko’s Vallarex line of floating cork floors recently received Greenguard Gold certification. The firm is using its new technology, which enables it to print custom visuals on the surface of its cork veneers, on the Vallarex line to expand its design options beyond classic cork looks to wood and stone visuals.