The Resilient Floor Covering Institute released five industry average Environmental Product Declarations, making resilient flooring the first floorcovering category to offer industry average EPDs. Five types of resilient flooring were evaluated: vinyl tile including luxury vinyl tile, vinyl composition tile, homogeneous vinyl, heterogeneous vinyl, and rubber. The development process spanned more than a year and included participation by 12 resilient flooring manufacturers: Amtico, Armstrong, Burke Flooring, Centiva, Congoleum, Gerflor, IVC US, Johnsonite, Mannington, Metroflor, Roppe and Tarkett.
The equivalent of a sustainability “nutrition label,” an EPD is a comprehensive disclosure of a product’s lifecycle-based environmental impacts. It documents environmental impacts from cradle to grave and offers a picture of effects on the atmosphere, water and earth. An EPD helps specifiers and purchasers assess lifecycle impacts and environmental attributes and facilitates product evaluation using factual data that is objective and transparent.