Q&A: How can I identify green flooring products?

Jul 7, 2008 12:32 PM

I want to replace my kitchen floor with sustainably harvested wood. I've seen all kinds different green labeling on flooring. How do I know whether a material is environmentally sound?

If you had lived during the 19th century, you wouldn't have had many flooring choices for your home. Chances are the lumber used would have been the dominant species from a nearby forest, and you likely wouldn't have had concerns about the condition of the forest.

Fast-forward to 2008. You'll now find a wide array of wood-flooring options, including many domestic choices, products that originate in exotic locales around the world, and a number of nonwood materials, as we detailed in our August 2008 report. (The same goes for decking products, as we covered in our July 2008 review.) In this time of greater environmental awareness, you can choose flooring—and hundreds of other wood products—based on how sustainably they were produced.

That's where certification enters the picture. Among the dozens of sustainable-forestry certification programs, the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative are the most recognizable in this country. Both nonprofit organizations, which date to the 1990s, aim to promote sustainable forestry.

Forest Stewardship Council
The FSC was founded by the World Wide Fund for Nature, other environmental groups, and industry representatives. The FSC's global standards for forestry management include 10 environmental, social, and economic principles and 56 criteria. All products that claim to contain FSC-certified wood must undergo an independent certification.

In part because the standards are very detailed and represent a balance of interests, leading environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, consider the FSC to be the most credible forest-certification program.

To identify 100 percent FSC-certified products, look for the FSC logo (shown) along with "100%." The FSC also has percentage-based content labels, which indicate a blend of FSC-certified wood and other controlled sources and/or recycled material. You'll find a list of FSC products by using the search tool on the Forest Certification Resource Center Web site.

Sustainable Forestry Initiative
The SFI, established by the American Forest and Paper Association trade group, sets forestry-management standards for North American forests. The standards include dozens of criteria that primarily address environmental issues, such as soil and water quality. While the program was initially self-regulating, it now includes an optional third-party certification component.

Since the SFI standards were originally designed to support the industry and tend to be general, the SFI has been criticized by some of the same environmental groups that support the FSC program.

To find wood products from forests that are 100 percent independently certified, look for the SFI label with "100%" on it. The SFI also has percentage-based labels (sample shown), which indicate a blend of SFI-certified wood and other controlled and/or recovered fiber sources. Note that some versions of the SFI label do not list the percentage and do not require that wood came directly from an SFI third-party certified forest. The search tool on the Forest Certification Resource Center Web site also lists available SFI-certified products.

FSC- and SFI-certified wood products are sold in lumberyards and home centers nationwide, including Home Depot and Lowe's. While both big-box retailers say the majority of the wood they carry is certified and that they give preference to FSC-certified products, due to the lack of availability, SFI-certified products are more commonly stocked.

Some of the certified wood products we've tested over the last year, including decking and windows, have performed very well. For example, we rated FSC-certified Iron Wood's ipe decking very good and selected this tropical wood as a Quick Pick. We also found Marvin's Clad Ultimate and Wood Ultrex Integrity SFI-certified clad-wood window lines excellent. To find out whether a particular product has been certified, check for an eco-label on the product itself and read the fine print.

Several green-building programs encourage the use of certified wood, though they sometimes differ in which certifications they employ. For example, the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Homes program recognizes the FSC and the National Association of Home Builders program acknowledges the SFI.

Buying credible, third-party-certified wood can not only promote sustainable forestry in North America but will help those tropical forests that are in decline in developing countries around the world.—Kristi Wiedemann, Science and Policy Analyst, GreenerChoices.org