Rapidly Renewable Wood - August/September 2008

By Brian Hamilton

Bamboo, cork and eucalyptus are the three major varieties of rapidly renewable hard surface floorcoverings, which can all be harvested in less than 15 years. That compares to hardwood floors like oak and maple, which typically use trees that mature in 40 to 60 years, according to the National Wood Flooring Association. However, floors made of these renewable resources comprise just a tiny part of the U.S. hardwood market as projected bamboo sales for this year are $98 million, or roughly 5% of the market, and $38 million for cork, with eucalyptus having no significant impact on the market, according to Santo Torcivia/Market Insights. Cork, the fastest growing category of the three, is expected to increase sales 23% this year.

The architecture and design community is becoming increasingly more interested in bamboo and cork, largely because they can contribute to earning points in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program in its rapidly renewing materials category. Eucalyptus, which matures in about 15 years, misses the LEED ten-year time frame.

The vast majority of the manufacturing of these floorcoverings is done overseas, where most of the raw material is grown. China pretty well corners the market on bamboo—technically a grass—and a majority of bamboo takes root in the Zhejiang province. Portugal dominates the cork industry, although cork oak forests can be found in Spain, southern France, Italy, Morocco and Tunisia, and even in China. Eucalyptus is grown in Europe, South America, and Australia, among other locales, and there are about 500 different species.

The best bamboo flooring comes from just one variety, mosa, which can grow to a height of 80 feet and a thickness of 6” in about four to six years, when it reaches maximum strength. The wall at the base of the stalk, known as a culm, can be more than an inch thick and it tapers over the length of the culm. After a culm of bamboo is harvested, one or more new shoots will takes its place. The strips are milled flat and then boiled in a boric acid and lime solution, which extracts the starch that attracts termites or powder post beetles. The prime part of the bamboo for flooring is the first eight feet. The rest is used in other industries, such as rugs, clothes or furniture.

Bamboo generally comes in two shades, natural and amber. The darker shade is produced by steam, which carmelizes the sugars in the bamboo.

The key to high quality bamboo is making sure it’s not harvested too early, which produces a weaker bamboo. And it needs to be processed within a couple of days in the boric solution so that it’s not weakened by pests or mildew.

It’s not necessarily easy for a customer to know what she’s getting unless the bamboo is purchased from a well known manufacturer. For example, there are no grades of bamboo flooring, as there are in hardwood. In addition, there aren’t any widely recognized certifications for bamboo. A lot of very inexpensive bamboo is shipped to this country and sold under various labels, but much of it is harvested too early and the quality of the processing varies. In addition, the well established players are largely using finishes and binders with little to no formaldehyde, which is not necessarily true of the off brands.

The Forest Stewardship Council, which is better known for its certification of hardwood, has just started working with some bamboo suppliers to validate their chain of custody. So far, only Smith & Fong, maker of Plyboo, has achieved the certification.

One of the environmental problems with bamboo is that most bamboo factories in China use coal for energy, a big contributor to carbon emissions. It also has to be shipped first by boat and then by trucks, two users of petroleum products. Bamboo stands are also often clear cut, which can cause erosion problems.

Cork flooring is made from the bark of the cork oak tree. The bark grows several inches thick over a period of about nine years, and then it’s carefully harvested without damaging the tree. Cork oak trees can live up to 250 years, and cork growing often passes down from generation to generation.

Worldwide there are about 5.8 million acres devoted to cork oak trees. It is estimated that the cork oak in Portugal alone sequesters about 4.8 million tons of CO2 annually. The vast majority of cork is grown for the wine bottle stopper industry, and cork flooring companies use the ground up leftovers from the stopper manufacturing process. So this is almost the best of two worlds. Cork floors are not only made of a rapidly renewing resource, but it’s also post industrial waste.

One of the interesting properties of cork is that it contains suberin, a natural insect repellent. It is also naturally antimicrobial.

BAMBOO
Teragren uses bamboo that it harvests from the same locations in China every year. The company works exclusively with one factory and controls the manufacturing. Its high end products are sold by independent retailers and are not available in big boxes or mass retailers. Its products meet European and Japanese environmental standards.

Teragren can make special order formaldehyde free products for projects that are seeking LEED points, but its standard gluing and finishing techniques result in very low emissions. The firm says it is already meeting all the FSC requirements, but has decided not to go through the long and expensive certification process.

The firm’s Synergy strand product, made by fusing bamboo fibers with adhesives under pressure, is its best selling product. The company says it’s twice as hard as oak and it will help qualify for an indoor air quality LEED point. Overall the firm has seven product lines, including products that use the Välinge locking system.

Teragren has been growing about 30% annually and through July was running at 26% growth. Most of its bamboo is used residentially, although restaurants and hotels are increasingly drawn to its products.

Smith & Fong, which claims to be the first company to bring bamboo flooring to the U.S. market, in January won FSC certification for its products, which includes Plyboo flooring and plywood. Smith & Fong said it was a struggle to get anyone to certify bamboo as most of the focus is on hardwood forests. However, the certification was worth pursuing because its clients wanted to know that the bamboo forests are managed sustainably.

The company harvests 20% of the bamboo it controls each year. It claims that an acre of bamboo sequesters 70% more carbon in a year than an acre of hardwood trees.

Flooring makes up about 40% of Smith & Fong’s business. It sells about 60% directly for large projects such as condominium developments or chain stores, and 40% to distribution. Sales are slightly ahead of last year’s pace.

Smith & Fong has a number of products, including PlybooStrand and Neopolitan Strand, an endgrain product called PlybooSquared, and a more traditional Flat Grain product. Its No Added Formaldehyde products are its fastest growing line. Smith & Fong also claims to be the only company to make flooring out of coconut palm. However, its growth cycle is comparable to hardwood.

Mannington also has a bamboo program and it’s moving toward no formaldehyde added adhesives, which should be in use this fall. The firm sources all its bamboo from a single supplier to ensure consistent quality. Mannington has four different looks, with two basic colors.

CORK
Amorim is the largest producer of cork and the largest cork flooring manufacturer in the world, partly because it makes 3 billion cork bottle stoppers every year, or about 27% of the world’s production. All of its cork is harvested in Portugal and Amorim is the only vertically integrated cork flooring maker, using the byproducts from its stopper business. None of the cork is wasted—even the dust is used for energy production.

Its major flooring brand is Wicanders, and its floating floors are selling better than its glue down floors. Later this year the firm is debuting a new cork plank that will be finished in the U.S. and will incorporate BASF’s Acrodur binder, which contains no VOCs.

U.S. Floors Inc., formerly known as Natural Cork, is known for its cork and sells more cork than anything else but it also has a line of bamboo, as well as pine flooring and linoleum. The firm is pursuing FSC certification for its cork products but has just begun the process. All of U.S. Floors’ cork flooring manufacturing is done in Portugal. The firm recently purchased a 99,000 square foot facility from Mohawk Industries in Dalton, Georgia to handle its expansion plans. It is in the middle of rebranding itself and the word “natural” will be used in its products lines rather than the company name.

Its cork products include floating floors, tiles and planks of different patterns and colors, and underlayments in rolls and sheets. Most of its sales are direct to independent flooring stores although it sells products through Lowe’s under a different brand name. This year it’s introducing New Dimensions, a line of 18” and 24” tiles and 7” wide planks. Styles, in general, are drifting toward traditional hardwood looks.

Like Teragren and Smith & Fong, U.S. Floors is also having success with its strand bamboo products.

Capri Cork, a two year old company, initially came out with three products. One of the first was Mediterra Cork, square tiles in14 patterns, including six floating floor patterns. Capri purchases its cork from an Italian flooring company. The firm also has a combination cork-rubber floor, as well as a recycled rubber floor called ReTire, that comes in 35 colors.

Capri is focusing on the commercial market for its cork floors but eventually plans to get into the residential market.

WE Cork, strictly a cork specialist, also gets its raw materials from Portugal, where its flooring is manufactured. The firm has several unusual styles, including Sable Gibraltar, a leather look, and Nairobi, a bamboo look. A lot of its products end up in kitchens, but increasingly they’re being used in commercial projects because of the influence of designers and architects, who like the products’ green qualities. Its floating floors, which use the Unilin locking system, are its most popular products.

EUCALYPTUS
Lyptus is the trademarked brand of eucalyptus sold by Weyerhaeuser. It’s actually a denser Eucalyptus hybrid that’s grown in Brazil on land owned by partner Aracruz. The land is thousands of miles from the rainforest and the trees are actually grown on land that used to be used for crops and livestock. The eucalyptus is planted in a mixed forest along with other tropical species and the plantations are managed as a permanent native forest. Weyerhaeuser has the cutting rights to 20,000 hectares, or a little less than 50,000 acres. The company claims that its forests are 11 times more productive than a managed temperate forest and produce 30 times as much wood as an unmanaged temperate forest. Aracruz also mills the trees and provides the logs. The forests carry Brazil’s Cerflor certification but not FSC certification. Cerflor certification has been somewhat controversial regarding its limited stakeholder participation and disputes with indigenous peoples.

This niche product has pinkish tones and resembles mahogany. Lyptus comes in both solid and engineered floors, in five stained colors. The engineered flooring is new in the last year and the firm is marketing the products heavily in the South, where slab construction is more common than basements. It is also targeting more commercial work, especially with its unfinished solids.

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