The Green Build Expo 2007 had many hardwood exhibitors, but 2 companies in particular caught my attention for their beautiful and unique products.
One company, Sustainable Flooring in Boulder, Colorado offers wood flooring products that are not only sustainable, but have an appearance unlike most hardwood flooring you have seen. Their product line is made up of reclaimed products, those that are “certified” by either the Forestry Stewardship Council or follow similar harvesting and production methodologies, and others that are either made from rapidly renewable raw materials or are created from post-industrial content. “Sustainable Woods” encompasses lesser know species. Their harvesting and subsequent use will help insure that forests are allowed to thrive.
The FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) certified woods are woods that have been harvested and milled in accordance with FSC standards, requiring a third party audit for all aspects of production, harvesting, milling and final sale. This is the most stringent and costly of certification systems.
One of the most beautiful and colorful wood products they offer is in their Strandwoven collection which is made up of densified and compressed wood fiber flooring. This gives it an elegant linear graining and warm richcolors ranging from yellow to red to brown that you don’t ordinarily see in hardwood floors. Other species in the collection include Rosa, MSB natural, Aspen Light, Bacana and Canary Wood.
If you are interested in exotic woods that are sustainably harvested they have species including Australian Cypress, Bacana, Canary Wood, Cumaru, Ipe and others.
Their products can be found in places such as Stanford University, The Ritz Carlton, Starbucks, REI and other green conscious venues.
You can request samples from their website. I recommend doing this because the pictures do not represent the color range that makes these products so fascinating.
The second company that caught my eye was TerraMai Reclaimed Woods. TerraMai provides distinctive, one-of-a-kind wood products for premiere commercial and residential projects throughout the world. Their products not only include flooring, but siding, paneling, decking, beams and custom items to fit your imagination. They travel the globe in search of the most beautiful and unique reclaimed woods. All of their woods are reclaimed and all are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.
You can find TerraMai products in projects by: Patagonia, Whole Foods Market, The Ritz Carlton Company, Rockwell Group, IBM,Gensler, Harrah’s, Urban Outfitters, Stanford University and more…
Like Sustainable Flooring above, Terra Mai offers some very colorful products such
as their World Mix Flooring. The source of this floor is packing lumber used in global industrial shipping. If not diverted, most of this material would simply wind up in landfills.
Amazingly, most of the woods used for shipping steel and heavy industrial equipment can be some of the most beautiful, durable wood in the world. A superior grade of dense, old-growth hardwood is required by many customs laws to ensure the safety of the products and the shippers.
With some effort, and cooperation from many private and public entities, TerraMai is salvaging these fantastic woods and giving them a new lifetime of use.
These phenomenal slabs of mixed tropical hardwoods are one-of-a-kind, custom fabricated pieces. Made from antique, untreated railway ties from Southeast Asia, these pieces show their history by their filled spike holes and other distinctive character markings. Although originally fabricated as custom stair treads, they are also ideal for counter or bar top applications (see specs below). This material survived decades as untreated railway ties in the most extreme tropical conditions, so they certainly can handle a little spilled milk.
These custom showpieces are a special value at $1,000 each or $100 per lineal foot.
Sources: Untreated tropical hardwood railway ties from Southeast Asia.
Species: Merbau, Alan Batu, Dtang and others.
Color tones: Deep golds and ambers to spicy reds and browns.
Dimensions: 1-3/8″ thick x net 12″ wide x 13′ long.
Millwork: Edge-joined, finger-jointed and surfaced with a half bull nose edge.
Character: Pre-filled spike holes, oxide stains, pre-filled surface seasoning checks and occasional sound tight knots.
Below is a TerraMai product called “Jungle Mix” found in a restaurant inside Treasure Island Resort in Las Vegas.
If you are interested in other hardwood companies that exhibited at the Green Build Expo, please leave a comment. After all, I am here to write what you want to read about!
Sustainable forestry is a positive thing in the flooring industry, good to hear about these sustainble woods.
Are you not using bamboo for flooring? It grows quickly and looks beautiful?
Absolutely! (but technically, it’s a grass not a hardwood) Check out the post on Green Products for more bamboo info. Thanks for your comment!
when everyone starts jumping on the “bamboo and cork” band wagon, they probably don’t realize that thousands of acres of natural forests are being cut down just to raise these “great new products”!!
not to sure how green they really are…
The great thing is that it grows quickly and can be replenished, but the fact that it comes from China and has to be transported using TONS of fuel is not so green. I am looking forward to a standard that we can hold all of these companies accountable to before they can call their products green. Thanks for your comment!
Actually true cork flooring comes from cork oak trees (Quercus suber) in the Mediterranean region and those trees are not cut down to make the flooring. Instead they are stripped of their outer layer (essentially stripped of their bark in a sense) and allowed to grow back their cork layer over the nest 9 -11 years to be replenished again and re stripped. This process is repeated over and over again over the life of the tree and believe it or not, this process even extends the average life of the cork oak tree. This is also all government regulated and is a renewable resource where trees are not cut down until their death which typically takes 150-250 years. Where their is some confusion is with Chinese cork (Quercus variabilis) where they do in fact cut down the trees since they cannot be stripped of their cork layer without killing the tree usually. So I guess my best bit of advice is to buy cork flooring from the Mediterranean region rather than China if you in fact are worried about being as “green” as possible. If anyone would like to learn more, I recommend visiting http://www.corkfacts.com/ which is run by my good friends at Amorim and who are the worlds largest cork suppliers.