Eco-Decorating: Creating an Earth-Friendly Room
By News Canada
(NC)-Today homeowners are choosing to create spaces made from environmentally responsible materials, and home decor retailers now offer eco-friendly products to meet the demand of this growing trend.
Your floor is always a good place to start since it's the second largest surface in any room.
The impact of buying an environmentally responsible floor can extend across the globe. Consider this: Rainforests are being destroyed at an estimated rate of 79 acres every minute, and consumers, who recognize this, are buying alternatives to thick-plank, conventional hardwood. Engineered hardwood, for example, uses up to 30 times less hardwood and is still a remarkably beautiful and natural floor.
The air we breathe is always cause for concern, and there is a growing understanding that indoor air quality must be considered when renovating a home or purchasing a new one. Hard-surface floors made of materials like hardwood, cork or leather do not trap dust or allergens, and many are passing important European standards for low (or zero) VOC emissions.
And what about the waste factor? In North America alone, 4.5 billion pounds of carpet are dumped in landfills every year. Re-using a floor, once considered a pipe-dream, is now a reality. Innovative new floors with high-quality joints = such as the European-patented Uniclic joint – make it possible to move a floor quite easily, enabling simple re-use.
In fact, one flooring company located in Canada, TORLYS Smart Floors, actually allows homeowners to re-use all their floors three times and still be covered by the original warranty. TORLYS (torlys.com) is one company that meets all the above criteria, upholding a genuine commitment that helps guide their success.
TIP: When looking for environmentally responsible flooring, ask the right questions:
- Does the product meet indoor air emissions tolerances?
- Is the underlay specially formulated to prevent mould and mildew?
- Which floor is produced with the least amount of hardwood?
- Can the floor be re-used and remain under warranty?
- Is there any arrangement for recycling donated flooring, for example, with an organization like Habitat for Humanity?
Start small when going green and you'll discover that most daily used items like mattresses can be eco-friendly and can be found at an online mattress store for easy delivery.