Laminate and Engineered floor covers are filling our landfills. Over the next 4-5 years, deposits into landfills will double from current levels of 300,000,000 lb. per year. Laminate & Engineered, add in LVT too, are a leased floor covers which rot forever on public lands? LVT, laminate and engineered floors are not green, they are not even biodegradable. Environmentalist scream about deforestation, but what is “greener” than One House, One Floor.
What is a VOC?
Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, are gases that are emitted into the air from products or processes. Some are harmful by themselves, including some that cause cancer. In addition, they can react with other gases and form other air pollutants after they are in the air. Furthermore, because it contains toxic VOCs like formaldehyde and takes decades to disperse, laminate is a health risk long after replaced.
Laminate and single use floors
These compounds continue to produce VOCs after they are in your home. Formaldehyde was found in a major retailer laminate a few years ago. Sixty Minutes did a shocking story, they promised to do better. However, the main manufacturers of this material are in China and Vietnam. Standards, for end products shipped back to the U.S. are nonexistent. For more about this issue contact us today. The carbon footprint of these products dwarfs that of sustainable forest producing the only true eco-friendly floor besides dirt.
Engineered for profit not health
When it comes to sustainability, one of the first issues with wood laminate is the large carbon footprint. It requires a lot of fossil fuel energy to power the required pressure and heat used in the manufacturing process. And more often than not, production occurs in China, that is problematic on a few levels, including VOC regulations.
Wear layers are shrinking
Engineered flooring was an innovation, that actually increased the yield of domestic mills. Early engineered floors had wear layers of ½ or 9 ⅙ of solid wood with small layers of other materials designed to replace sub-floor. In those days we did not have the adhesive we have today, so this was a great innovation; however, the intent was for a few situations, never for the mass market. The problem is that manufacturers came up with some innovative marketing while taking the wear layers down to 2mm, from 1/2 inch.
SYP Direct the Homeowners Advocate
If you are confused or just sick of all the nonsense you hear about laminate and engineered floors, please give us a call. SYP Direct believes in ‘One House, One Floor’, no repeat customers unless they move or add on. We sell the type of floors someone reclaim one day, not the type that sits in landfills. We are the homeowners advocate and their resource for the truth about wood flooring, fake and real.
Laminate and Engineered floors are just a lease
Laminate and engineered floors are a single use cover, which is exactly like a lease you’re going to pay a certain amount for it, and then it’s going to end up in a landfill. Real wood is the only green choice. A real Wood floor remains functional for 140 years. How many single use covers revolved during that time period? How much homeowner equity turned into profits for shareholders by tricking us into thinking compressed garbage and plastic is better than real wood.
The industry
Lifetime transferable waterproof, not resistant but proof, come on! We have some “luxury vinyl” cost more than our prefinished 7” solid wide plank Heart Pine. No kidding- how upside down is that? But wait, they have a magic warranty. One which can be transferred as if it had any value whatsoever. They claim pine is not durable. Independence Hall still looks good, as do the 3500 Duck camps with pine floors across the marsh (guesstimate). They tell you it cannot be glued or is too expensive, the list is based on their lack of source and motivation to sell unfinished (low margin) flooring.
Arbitrage is the simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset to profit from an imbalance in the price. It is a trade that profits by exploiting the price differences of identical or similar financial instruments (raw materials) on different markets or in different forms. Timber ships to Vietnam, back as a photocopy of wood floor plus some slivers. Presto, the trees “retail” value goes up 100 times, 1000 times? Nobody really knows, like that owl licking the tootsie roll pop.