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Flooring

Whatever the material, floors have a huge impact on indoor air quality, the look and feel of a home, as well as its environmental performance. There is a wide variety of flooring materials available that vary in their health and environmental impacts on your home.

Flooring

Embodied energy, life cycle, indoor air quality and passive solar design are all considerations before making a sustainable decision about your household floor coverings.
Timber

Timber floors look beautiful and put the natural world right at your feet. Timber is low in embodied energy and can be reused, recycled or composted if no further use is found for it.
Bamboo

A material that is growing in popularity, bamboo is strong, durable and lightweight. Like timber (bamboo is a grass), bamboo is a renewable resource, and uses fewer valuable resources such as water because it takes only three to six years to grow.
Concrete & Tiles

While higher in embodied energy, concrete is a fantastic material for storing and releasing heat (thermal mass); a must for good passive solar design, particularly in colder climates. Tiles come in a range of types including ceramic, slate, terracotta, brick and pavers.
Carpet, vinyl and linoleum

Some floor coverings greatly influence the indoor air quality as they contain synthetic chemical products. Choose natural materials such as lino (not to be confused with vinyl floor coverings), wool, hemp, sisal, jute, cork and seagrass matting.
Floor Coverings

The first question you need to ask is do you need a floor covering at all? Polished concrete, wooden and bamboo floors can not only help with the environmental performance of a house - concrete floors are excellent for trapping and releasing heat - they can also look spectacular. Secondhand and recycled products are also an option. Some companies supply heavy-duty wool carpets that are reclaimed from office renovations, cleaned and their condition graded. There is also a range of carpet underlays made from old carpets, textile off-cuts or even recycled plastic bottles.

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Listed suppliers are a guide and are not endorsed by Green Cross Australia or the Alternative Technology Association.

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