Polyflor Sustainability Showcase

Polyflor has, for many decades, been recognised as a leading global manufacturer of high quality, high-performance floorcoverings. As pioneers in the field of commercial vinyl flooring, Polyflor was awarded a second Queen’s Award in 2007 for Enterprise in the category of continuous product innovation and development. In 2000, Polyflor achieved ISO 14001 accreditation, an environmental management system, which helps drive environmental policy and objectives, which Polyflor must meet or supersede.

Fit for Purpose
There is no reason for customers to compromise on performance, choice or budget in order to use products with the lowest environmental impact. Polyflor does not manufacture a specific environmental range, but manufactures the highest quality commercial flooring with a level of performance and benefits in class-leading environmental features.

Recycling
Vinyl is 100% recyclable and can be recycled many times without losing any performance properties. Recycled vinyl requires 85% less energy to manufacture than virgin PVC.

The figure of 25% average recycled material in Polyflor’s homogenous flooring, for instance, is made up of production waste and post consumer waste. Polyflor believes that quoting an average percentage is more helpful to its customers than using the highest figure it achieved on one particular range. Plus available waste per production run can vary. Polyflor remains an active supporter of the Vinyl 2020 commitment, and its European wide targets for recycling vinyl. In 2008 Polyflor recycled 12,005 tonnes of post production waste.

Product Stewardship
Some of the greatest progress Polyflor has made in the last couple of years has been the collection and recycling of post consumer waste. This is not only off-cuts from installation but also uplifted flooring and re-used in new product. In 2008 Polyflor recycled 736 tonnes of post consumer waste. Following on from government funded trials, 2009 saw the launch of a new recycling scheme across the UK: Polyflor are one of two founder members of Recofloor, the industry funded vinyl take-back scheme. Recofloor enables easier and more efficient methods for end of life vinyl flooring to be
returned and re-used.

Energy Efficiency

• Less energy to produce than other plastics and linoleum.
• Typical 25 year life means fewer replacements, so less energy to produce flooring for the life of the building.
• Energy consumption in manufacture reduced by over 36% in the last 8 years.
• Carbon emissions reduced by 13,370 tonnes since 2000.

VOC
All of Polyflor’s flooring ranges have passed key international standards, including AgBB and FloorScore^®. Over the last 2 years the company has reformulated all its ranges to ensure the level of VOC emissions is kept to the lowest levels achievable.

Maintenance
The in-use phase of the resilient flooring life cycle accounts for at least 80% of its environmental impact. Because of this, Polyflor has focused its efforts on developing products which greatly reduce the need for energy intensive cleaning. The easier-to-clean product ranges, PU, PUR and Supratec+
ranges, also ensure that use of polish, water and chemical cleansers is significantly reduced, with PUR requiring no polish for life.

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