Mohawk Flooring-Eco Friendly-Sustainable Floors
Mohawk Flooring
Eco Friendly-Sustainable Floors
Mohawk has dedicated their company, employees and customers to building a better world by redefining flooring so that it minimizes climate impacts while maintaining beauty and healthier families.
Sustainable Product Innovation
Mohawk continues to find new innovations of producing sustainable flooring and have since produced Airo which is a new soft floor covering category that is manufactured from recycled polyester. The fast and easy installation of Airo reduces the physical stress on installers while it can be completely recycled at the end of the floors life cycle.
Airo leads the industry in sustainable technology with its wide selection of tile products that are made up of pre- and post-consumer recycled content. Their laminate flooring is made from recycled wood fiber and chips while the SmartStrand carpet collections are produced with proprietary bio-based polymer and has been extended into their rug collection.
Believe in Better
They constantly work towards bettering their company by putting out new ideas that contribute to designs, innovations, sustainability, project solutions and operational excellence.
Mohawk sponsors third-party platforms such as LEED, Living Product Challenge and WELL which reinforces their position of providing healthier products, families and sustain a healthier planet.
Believing in Better, Together
Mohawk’s values and vision of creating a healthier world is closely aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They envision putting an end to poverty, hunger, inequality and protecting the Earth’s natural resources while doing the right thing which needs to be a concerted collective action and new forms of partnerships between more than 190 countries.
A Look at Mohawk’s Newest Earth-Friendly Products
Mohawk decided to replace their traditional latex and secondary backing with a proprietary adhesive and since it is made from 100% PET, it can be repurposed as new carpet. Mohawk has created several earth-friendly products such as SolidTech, SmartStrand Naturals, EverStand and Moduleo. SolidTech and Moduleo contribute to the production of luxury vinyl flooring while SmartStrand and EverStand contribute to carpet.
SOLIDTECH
SolidTech has the strength and rich visual of hardwood while expressing the fashion, durability and cleanability of a luxury vinyl tile or plank. It is the most natural hard flooring that Mohawk has ever produced.
SMARTSTRAND NATURALS
The softest carpet to walk on is also stain-resistant due to the renewably sourced polymers which requires less energy during manufacturing. SmartStrand has the stain-resistant component inside the fibers instead of being sprayed with chemicals.
EVERSTRAND
The EverStrand carpets are manufactured with PET bottles which helps to reduce the amount of plastic going into landfills and minimizes the need for fossil fuels. Mohawk’s BCF Continuum process is what makes this line much stronger and stain-resistant than their other lines.
MODULEO
The Moduleo flooring is produced with water-based inks and PU coatings while the backing is made from reclaimed PVC materials that would have otherwise gone to the landfills. The easy and fast installation process is due to the low-impact of the LockXpress click system.
Mohawk strives to achieve greater sustainability based on the challenges posed by water, energy and waste. They like to think outside of the box which is how they cultivated their innovation and idea-sharing to make sure they have continual progress toward environmental efficiency.
A System That Works with Nature
IVC in Belgium has invested in a more environmentally friendly approach to manufacturing high-grade vinyl floors by using surface water from the Scheldt river. It travels through a closed-loop system that never touches the plant’s process cooling water which means no contamination of the river water, minimal temperature increases and significant noise reduction.
MO-Honey from Local Bees
Mohawk is helping to sustain the global pollinator crisis by having their own beehives on the edge of their carpet plant in Glasgow, Virginia. There are eight hives with more than 1 million bees that help pollinate the area and supply honey to the employees of Mohawk and any visitors.
Material Recycling Takes to the Road
The scrap materials that remain after production is finished is them put back into production to be used. Mohawk’s Dal-Tile plants have found a way to effectively recycle their scrap tile with a mobile material recycler that travels between Tennessee, Alabama and Texas. It keeps scraps out of the landfills and turns that product into usable, marketable products.
Committed to the Cure
Mohawk is a longtime contributor of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure against breast cancer and even helped supply 3-day participants with pieces of SmartCushion for walkers and crew members.
A Good Neighbor Around the World
The IVC group helps support the local food bank in Avelgem, Belgium along with donating to Music for Life. The Kerama Marazzi employees helped a local kindergarten school by replacing the tiles in the bathrooms, kitchens and a swimming pool in Russia. The regional sales team launched a fundraising project where they gave children base tiles to draw their own design which are sold in the Kerama Marazzi stores where the proceeds are used to repair city schools.
Dal-Tile is a national corporate sponsor of Habitat for Humanity where employees and customers help complete building homes for people in need.
Rooms That Educate, Protect and Inspire
Mohawk embraces traditional and cutting-edge processes to produce products that do not contain volatile organic compounds or formaldehyde. They use kiln firing for their ceramic tile to PureBond technology that destroys formaldehyde adhesives in their engineered wood. Their Unilin’s installation is a glue-less and chemical-free system that reduces the materials needed for installation and air quality impact.
Their products have earned several health-focused environmental certificates such as:
- CRI Green Label and Green Label Plus certification for their products that do not harmfully affect indoor air quality
- FloorScore certification that states the laminate and hardwood flooring meet strict indoor air quality standards
- GreenGuard certification is from UL Environment that states products meet rigorous chemical emissions limits
- CARB Phase 2 certification that ensures that the hardwood and laminate pass the formaldehyde emissions standards
These certifications allow customers to find environmentally friendly products for their homes. Several of their businesses use a life cycle assessment to evaluate the complete impact of their products and can also be used to implement Environmental Product Declarations and Health Product Declarations.
We Put Waste to Work
Mohawk manufactures products with cleaner materials and makes sure to reuse any waste instead of putting it into a landfill. They reduce their environmental footprint by reusing and recycling their flooring.
Making Wood Go Further
Their laminate flooring is made from lumber byproducts and scraps of wood. Since there is extremely limited forestry in the Flanders region of Belgium, both new and recycled wood is sparse for their laminate products.
Flemish authorities began to finance green electricity biomass plants which resulted in that area beginning to compete for the same wood by-products that Unilin needed for their material. Unilin than began to focus on the use of recyclable post-consumer wood while they emphasized the important of Flemish law adopting the European principles to cascade the use of wood.
They have since joined with waste collectors, waste sorters and recyclers in a two-year study to develop, analyze and evaluate all the different scenarios of issues with wood waste recycling. The end goal is to discover a way to repurpose wood waste a minimum of one more time before it reaches the end of its life cycle which has led Mohawk’s wood panel to increase its sourcing of urban wood as raw material from 30 to 80 percent. They have also collaborated with an external party to convert MDF waste into active carbon.
A Decade of Diverting Carpet Waste
Mohawk has a ReCover program that recycles carpet from buildings by donating them to nonprofit organizations as opposed to taking them to landfills. In the past decade, the ReCover program has donated over 148.5 million pounds of carpet to new homes and have since expanded into other areas of flooring removal to include removal of carpet and other materials from inside of airplanes.
Rolling Out the Green Carpet
The Proximity Hotel in North Carolina wanted to be the first hotel to be LEED Platinum certified so they contacted Mohawk to replace all their carpet and the recycle their used carpet. Staff from the ReCover program took care of the removal and transport of the used carpet and Durkan provided new custom carpeting. This helped further the reputation of the Proximity by demonstrating their commitment to its customers and the environment.
A More Sustainable Welcome Mat
Mohawk is the largest supplier of rugs and mats in the United States and produces these from used tires. Their Impressions mats is composed of molded crumb rubber from recycled tires and 100% recycled PET fabric top which can use up to 10 million pounds of recycled tires every year.
For more information please contact us at 1-877-966-3983 or sales@woodwudy.com.
