Get Sust! Issue 33

The true cost of cleaning carpets?

Choice of floor-covering for commercial buildings is no longer a simple question of aesthetics - a truly sustainable choice will take account of the carbon and water footprints of the materials used by preparing a life-cycle assessment (LCA).

A study in New Zealand suggests that - over the whole life of the flooring - carpet beats hard-wood flooring in terms of time, water and energy usage. This is because, although the electrical energy requirements for both types of flooring are similar for areas with heavier traffic volumes, hard floors requiring up to 40 times more water than carpet, depending on the amount of traffic.

Ryan McCall and colleagues at Canesis Network Ltd, Christchurch, report their findings in the journal Indoor and Built Environment, concluding that maintaining carpets has a lower overall environmental impact than maintaining hard floors...

... but before you rip up your timber floors, bear in mind that Canesis was formerly know as the Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand Inc.

Learn more:

•

‘Comparison of the energy, time and water usage required for maintaining carpets and hard floors’ by R.A. McCall and S.J. McNeil, Indoor and Built Environment, Vol. 16, No. 5, 482-486 (2007); online at <http://ibe.sagepub.com/.