Whole-of-life carbon in flooring: why the factory gate is not the whole story
Almost every sustainable flooring claim you will read in New Zealand is built on one number, and it is the wrong one.
The number is the manufacturing stage: raw material supply, transport to the factory, and production. Cradle to gate. For any timber product it looks spectacular, because growing trees absorb carbon and that absorption is counted as a negative.
Engineered oak is a good example. At the manufacturing stage a timber floor is genuinely carbon negative on paper. Putting "carbon negative flooring" on a website is an easy thing to do.
We will not, and here is why.
Carbon in timber is a loan, not a gift
The negative result exists because the timber in the board holds carbon pulled from the atmosphere while the trees were growing.
That carbon is stored, not destroyed. It stays locked in the board for as long as the board exists. When the floor eventually reaches end of life it is released, and the end-of-life result is larger than the manufacturing credit.
The life cycle standards anticipate exactly this temptation, and carry the warning in plain language: manufacturing-stage results should not be used without the end-of-life results alongside them.
Any supplier quoting a cradle-to-gate result for a timber product without the end-of-life result beside it is, at best, quoting selectively.
The whole-of-life picture
Counted properly, from forest to end of life, a timber floor carries a positive whole-of-life carbon cost. Not a negative one. Shipping from Europe is part of that total, and it belongs in the total rather than in a footnote.
We do not hold a document that establishes that total for our flooring, so we do not publish a figure for it. We will not lend you a number from a neighbouring product to fill the gap.
Which brings us to the number that actually matters
If you accept that every floor carries a whole-of-life cost, the question stops being "which floor has the lowest number" and becomes "how many times will I pay it".
The standards are explicit on this point. Products must be compared over the same reference study period, on the same functional unit. You cannot compare a square metre of Floor A against a square metre of Floor B if one lasts several times as long as the other. You have to compare across the life of the building.
A floor that lasts the life of a building is bought once, and refinished along the way if it needs to be. A floor with a short service life is bought again and again. Every replacement carries its own manufacturing emissions, its own shipment, its own installation and its own disposal, plus the waste stream of the floor it displaced.
The lowest-impact floor is almost never the one with the smallest cradle-to-gate number. It is the one you do not replace.
How to compare properly
If you are specifying and want to make a genuine comparison rather than a marketing one, ask four questions.
- Is there a third-party verified environmental statement, who holds it, and what product does it cover? A verified statement from a recognised programme is the minimum. A brochure claiming eco credentials is not one. Ask whether the supplier holds it themselves or is passing on their manufacturer's, and ask which product line and which board thickness it was prepared for. The answers tell you how close a supplier is to their own supply chain.
- What is the declared reference service life? This is the single most important figure in the document and it is frequently omitted from marketing.
- Is end of life declared? If only the manufacturing stage is published, you are not seeing the whole picture.
- Can the product be repaired or refinished? A floor that can be sanded and recoated has a service life that extends well beyond the declared figure. A floor that cannot be repaired is landfill the day it is damaged.
What we do not claim
Marchand flooring is not carbon negative, not carbon neutral and not offset. There is no environmental statement in our hands for the flooring, and none we can put in yours. We hold an FSC promotional licence, not chain of custody certification.
What we are is a durable, refinishable timber floor from a certified supply chain, sold by people who will tell you which documents exist, who holds them and exactly what they cover. We think that is a stronger thing to be than a product with a flattering number and no context.
Slip, fire and acoustic results from independent laboratories sit on our Resources page, together with the VOC report. The wider position is set out on our Sustainability page.
