Green Products

Cork

Natural Cork is enjoying a resurgence in popularity today. From television design shows to shelter magazines, Natural Cork is seemingly everywhere and ostensibly the "hottest new product" on the market.

Many people think of cork as a relatively new and possibly unreliable option particularly as a surface flooring material. And yet, there are examples of Natural Cork floors in public buildings that were installed over 100-years ago and are still in use today.

Bamboo

Natural Bamboo is a member of the grass family. This fact goes a long way toward explaining several of Natural Bamboo's unique characteristics. We are familiar with grass as a rapidly growing invasive plant, as is Natural Bamboo. Maturing to a height of 20 meters or more in a mere four years, Natural Bamboo is ready to harvest. And, like grass, cutting Natural Bamboo does not kill the plant. An extensive root system remains intact, allowing for rapid regeneration. This quality makes Natural Bamboo an ideal plant for areas threatened with the potentially devastating ecological effects of soil erosion.

There are many species of Natural Bamboo. Tall and straight, Moso Natural Bamboo is the species of choice for flooring fabrication. Natural Bamboo uses only exclusive and proprietary Moso6® Premium 6 Year Moso Bamboo with 6 years of maturity, selecting the base of the stalk for its superior strength and hardness. The remainder of these stalks become consumer goods such as chopsticks, plywood sheeting, furniture, window blinds, and even pulp for paper products. Nothing is wasted in processing Moso6® Natural Bamboo.

When it comes to the environment, cork and Natural Bamboo are a perfect combination. Both are renewable, are harvested with no harm to their natural habitat, and produce materials that promote a healthy human environment.

Carpet

Mohawk leads innovation in sustainable flooring with SmartStrand® carpet with DuPont™ Sorona® renewably sourced polymer. In a partnership with DuPont, this carpet exclusively offers fiber made with Bio-PDO™ (the key Sorona® ingredient), which is produced from corn sugar.

By utilizing this new ingredient, 37 percent of Sorona® is being made from renewable resources. This marks the first time that a luxuriously soft carpet offers durability and stain protection, while also making less of an environmental impact.

DuPont™ Sorona® plays a major role in the worldwide objective of a renewable economy and represents a new frontier in sustainability. This carpet is environmentally smart because:

The production of Sorona® polymer requires 30 percent less energy than the production of an equal amount of nylon.
Greenhouse gas emissions from the production of Sorona® are 63 percent lower than nylon manufacturing.
This energy reduction results in approximately one gallon of gasoline saved per every seven square yards of carpet.

The superior stain resistance of SmartStrand® carpet is engineered into the fiber and will never wear or wash off, meaning consumers will never need to retreat the carpet with stain protectors after steam cleaning.

And this engineered-in stain resistance reaches new levels of protection, allowing tough stains such as mustard, red wine, and cherry Kool-Aid® to be removed simply with warm water and a mild detergent, or with Mohawk FloorCare™ Essentials. The fiber even resists discoloration from bleach.

Shaw's ClearTouch® Carpet

In a previous life it might have been a soft drink, but now it's just soft.

Introducing Shaw ClearTouch® Filament PET carpet made from plastic bottles.

Shaw is pleased to introduce a line of carpets featuring the company's new ClearTouch® BCF PET with recycled content. Like the BCF ClearTouch introduced in 2005, the new ClearTouch is a continuous filament fiber that offers the inherent attributes of polyester as well as exceptional performance characteristics, such as excellent appearance retention and long-term wear. An added benefit of the new fiber is recycled content.

The significance of the new continuous filament ClearTouch is the result of a patent-pending process. Shaw's ClearTouch filament PET styles are unlike any others in the industry and are the result of superior engineering and craftsmanship. ClearTouch styles are rated for appearance retention according to the CRI industry scale, and all have earned performance ratings high enough to qualify for Shaw's Texturegard? texture retention warranty.

The new ClearTouch yarn system also boasts exceptional softness. The extra softness is the result of the yarn's fine-denier filaments. The smaller denier produces the supple touch, while advanced yarn engineering, including optimum twist levels, accounts for the superior durability.

Further differentiating ClearTouch carpets from conventional PET products is the company's patented R2x? Stain and Soil Resistance System for enhanced protection against spills and tracked-in dirt.

Of special note is that millions of pounds of soft drink and water bottles are now used to manufacture BCF ClearTouch carpets. This patent-pending innovation is unique to standard manufacturing processes of PET BCF fibers.