Four flooring retailers in southwest Ohio recently became the first in the region to offer health and environmental scorecards for their full line of “green” flooring products along with virtually every traditional product they carry.

 

The scorecards are part of the Natural Interiors Design Center program, which has been licensed exclusively in southwest Ohio by Carpetland Carpet One Floor & Home and Schumacher & Co. Custom Hardwood Floors in Milford, OH; ProSource Wholesale Floorcoverings in Cincinnati; and, Buddy’s Flooring America in Beavercreek.

Using Better for Peopleand Better for the Planeticons, the program lists indoor-air quality and planet friendly attributes for each product. Checkmarks appear in the icons if the product has achieved a third-party certification, verifying that it meets set limits for chemical emissions or planet-friendly sustainability standards.

“More and more people buying flooring are asking about whether specific products emit chemicals that compromise indoor-air quality and human health,” said Ken Weisbacher, president of Carpetland Carpet One Floor & Home. “The Natural Interiors program gives our customers documentation of the indoor-air quality standards a product meets, in addition to whether it is better for the planet.”

The scorecards make it easy to compare competing claims among “green” products. The scorecards at Carpetland, for example, show 40 percent of the cork products they sell have third-party certifications for meeting set indoor-air quality standards; sixty percent of the bamboo-flooring brands they carry have IAQ certifications.

As part of the program, Schumacher & Co. Custom Hardwood Floors, located inside Carpetland Carpet One in Milford, also has expanded its hardwood floor finishing services to include low-VOC, solvent-free and low-odor options.

“We now offer a finish for all of our customers, including those who want to eliminate any chemical odor in their homes,” said Roy Young, quality control manager for Schumacher & Co.

Standards shown on the Natural Interiors scorecards for products that have indoor air quality certifications include GREENGUARD Indoor Air Quality Certification, FloorScore Certification, CRI Green Label Plus and compliance with the most stringent indoor- air quality standards set by the state of California. A product’s planet –friendly benefits also are shown on the scorecards through certifications that range from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification to multi-attribute lifecycle assessment certifications such as Cradle to Cradle.

Carpetland, ProSource and Schumacher & Co. have carried a full line of quality ‘green’ flooring products – from bamboo to linoleum to chemical-free wool carpet – for more than a decade. Buddy’s Flooring America began adding these products in 2008.

 

Nancy Kibbee is Marketing Director, Natural Interiors. You can reach her at (513) 984-9472 or email her at

nkibbee@naturalinteriors.com