Sustainable timber flooring, measured over fifty years

Most flooring sustainability claims stop at the factory gate. Ours does not, because that is not where the impact of a floor is decided.

A floor's environmental cost is a function of how often it is replaced. Every replacement carries its own manufacturing, transport, installation and disposal burden, plus the waste stream of the floor it displaced. The floor you do not replace is the one that matters.

Built to be refinished rather than replaced

Our flooring carries a 6mm solid European oak wear layer over a 14mm eucalyptus ply core with birch backing. That wear layer takes four or five re-sands at about 1mm each, stopping short of the last of it so the board stays sound and the tongue and groove stays intact. A worn or damaged surface is sanded and recoated instead of lifted and landfilled. That is not an option for laminate, vinyl or carpet.

The construction detail is published in full in our Technical Specifications. The flooring carries a 25 year residential warranty and a 5 year commercial warranty, and we publish the terms in full, not a summary.

What we hold, and what we do not

We do not hold an environmental statement for our flooring, and we do not have one to give you. We will not quote figures from a document we cannot put in your hands.

We would rather say we do not have something than imply that we do.

What we do publish, in full and not in summary, is the testing: slip resistance, VOC emissions, reaction to fire, acoustic performance and topical moisture resistance. It is all on our Resources page. If you are assessing a building and need documentation, ask us and we will tell you exactly what exists.

Why we do not call it carbon negative

At the manufacturing stage, any timber product looks carbon negative, because growing trees absorb carbon and that absorption is counted as a credit. It would be easy to stop there.

That carbon is stored, not destroyed. It stays locked in the board for as long as the board exists, and at end of life it is released. A cradle-to-gate figure quoted without the end-of-life figure beside it is a selective quote, and the life cycle standards say so in plain language.

Marchand flooring is not carbon negative, not carbon neutral and not offset. We do not claim otherwise.

Service life is the real variable

Life cycle standards require that products be compared over the same reference study period, on the same functional unit. This is the part most flooring comparisons skip.

You cannot compare a square metre of one floor against a square metre of another if one lasts several times as long. A floor that lasts the life of a building is bought once and refinished along the way. A floor with a short service life is bought again and again.

If you are comparing products, ask any supplier for their environmental statement, ask what the declared reference service life is, ask who holds the document, and ask which product and thickness it covers. Those four answers tell you more than any claim on a box.

Indoor air quality

A floor covers more surface area than almost any other material in a house, and people are in contact with it constantly.

Our flooring has been tested for volatile organic compound emissions to CDPH Standard Method V1.2, and we publish the report in full on our Resources page, not a summary of it. Formaldehyde and TVOC chamber concentrations are recorded in that document.

Formaldehyde emission class E1. Our manufacturer's batch inspection of January 2026 measured formaldehyde release at 0.69 mg/L by desiccator method, below the 1.0 mg/L E1 limit under AS/NZS 2098.11. It sits above the 0.5 mg/L E0 threshold, so we classify it E1 and do not claim E0. That inspection covers a single batch of one colour, not the range as a whole.

The coating has been tested separately by SGS. A GB 18581-2020 assessment in October 2022 measured VOC content at 24 g/L against a 420 g/L limit, with benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, methanol, halogenated hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons all not detected. A January 2024 EU RoHS assessment found no lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, PBBs, PBDEs or restricted phthalates. Both cover the coating as supplied rather than the finished floor. Neither is downloadable here, because they are our supplier's documents rather than ours, and we do not publish our supply chain's certificates.

Responsible forestry

Our engineered oak flooring is manufactured by an FSC Chain of Custody certified producer and supplied as an FSC 100% certified product, labelled under that producer's own chain of custody certificate. The FSC 100% claim is stated on the commercial invoice and packing list for every consignment we receive.

FSC 100% means every fibre in the board comes from certified forest. It is the stronger of the two claims. FSC Mix, which is far more common in this category, allows certified material to be combined with controlled wood.

Marchand holds FSC® Promotional Licence FSC-N004872, issued by FSC Australia and New Zealand. We are not chain of custody certified ourselves, and we do not claim to be. A promotional licence lets us talk about FSC in our own marketing. The certificate the label is issued under belongs to the producer who makes the board, which is where it should sit.

Our oak is sourced through a supply chain declared to FSC Australia and New Zealand, and that declaration was accepted in March 2026 when our licence was issued.

Our oak wall and ceiling boards are not currently supplied with FSC product labelling, so we make no FSC claim for them.

If FSC documentation is a requirement on your project, raise it at specification stage and we will tell you exactly what we can evidence.

Common questions

Is engineered oak flooring sustainable?

It depends on service life and sourcing. An engineered oak floor with a thick wear layer, from a certified forestry supply chain, that can be refinished rather than replaced, compares well against any resilient flooring over a building's lifetime. An engineered floor with a thin wear layer that cannot be refinished does not.

What is the carbon footprint of Marchand oak flooring?

We do not publish one, because we do not hold a document that establishes it and we will not quote a figure we cannot stand behind. What we can say is that a floor which is refinished instead of replaced carries a lower whole-of-life cost than one bought again every ten to fifteen years, and that is the part of the question we can answer honestly.

Is Marchand flooring FSC certified?

Yes. The boards are labelled FSC 100% under our manufacturer's chain of custody certificate, so every fibre is certified rather than blended with controlled wood. Marchand itself holds FSC Promotional Licence FSC-N004872 rather than chain of custody certification, which is the ordinary arrangement: the certificate sits with the producer who makes the board. The wall and ceiling boards are not currently FSC labelled.

Can the floor be refinished?

Yes, four or five times. That is what the 6mm oak surface layer is for.

Documentation

Test results for slip resistance, VOC emissions, reaction to fire, acoustic performance and topical moisture resistance are published in full on our Resources page, alongside technical specifications, installation instructions and warranty terms.

We publish our own testing in full. Some of the documents behind what we say belong to our supply chain, not to us, and those are theirs to release. What we will always do is tell you exactly what exists, who holds it and what it covers. For anything project-specific, get in touch.