Sustainable Flooring Options

What properties, besides cost, warrant consideration when considering flooring choices? Health issues such as toxicity or the avoidance of bacteria, dust and allergens need foremost attention. Health concerns should disqualify carpeting. Although there are eco-friendly choices for carpeting, such as wool, sisal, P.E.T. Berber (made from recycled plastic bottles) and carpet tiles, none of these avoid the inherent problem with all carpeting: the trapping of dirt, mites, pesticides and chemicals tracked in from outside. The AIA (American Institute of Architects) did a study some years ago, weighing newly installed carpeting that was steam cleaned weekly over its 10-year life and weighing it again when pulled up. Despite the rigorous cleaning schedule, it weighed 3 times its original weight. No cleaning method can completely remove the dirt and bacteria that get ground into carpeting.

If we rule out carpeting, what are other good choices? Wood flooring is one. Durability, recycled, reclaimed or renewable material, and transportation distance are key criteria for environmentally-friendly flooring. Taking these measures into account, wood flooring rates high. Solid wood flooring is not usually considered sustainable due to deforestation concerns, but wood from forests that are responsibly and sustainably managed and that carry the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification guarantee negate any such worry. Reclaimed wood milled into flooring or, even better, reclaimed wood flooring is another way to get attractive flooring without logging existing forests. Then there is pre-finished, engineered wood flooring (FSC certified). Engineered wood is more stable than sawn boards, uses less wood per square foot, and avoids off-gassing when toxic-free adhesives are used. 

Although frequently considered along with wood flooring, bamboo is actually a rapidly growing grass and thus supremely renewable. Make certain the bamboo is mature, 4-6-year growth, because flooring made from 2-3-year-old bamboo is soft and scuffable. A variation, strand woven bamboo, has more of a wood grain look, is stable and extremely hard—twice as hard as oak. The only drawback to bamboo is that most of it comes from China, requiring transportation half way around the world.

Concrete isn’t usually thought of as sustainable or as flooring. When made with a high percentage fly-ash mix, concrete becomes considerably greener. Fly-ash is a waste product from coal power plants that can be substituted for cement and greatly reduces its greenhouse gas emissions. Concrete slabs can be turned into beautiful, eco-friendly flooring through selection of score pattern, use of organic dyes and careful polishing—often being made to look like stone, tile or old leather. As finish flooring, it saves the expense and material needed to install another finish floor over it. Concrete flooring contributes to high-quality, indoor air.

Other sustainable flooring choices are: naturally cushioned, anti-microbial, sound and thermal insulating cork (bark from cork oak trees); linoleum made from linseed oil, cork dust, tree resins and limestone; and glass tiles made from recycled glass bottles.

Flooring can be beautiful, easy on the environment and promoting of good health and there is a wide variety of choices.

Electrify, Electrify, Electrify

Each Time We Replace an Appliance Is an Opportunity to Reduce Warming Emissions 

Until recently, most of us have not had choices about the power we consume: the gas for our cars or the fuel used to produce our electricity. Most supply-side choices are made by giant corporations. Fortunately, the game is shifting, at least in California and a few other states, where community choice energy programs with more clean energy, often 100 percent, are increasingly available. Santa Barbara, City and County, now have community choice programs. This is changing the supply side of the equation.

On the demand side, however, we have always had more influence: We decide what we drive, how we heat our water, what heats our house, what cooks our food, and what dries our laundry. For the past 50 years, the climate focus related to the machines and appliances we routinely buy has been on efficiency — mandated vehicle fuel standards, tighter houses through more rigorous energy codes, and Energy Star appliance performance ratings. Efficiency policies are not going to get us to zero emissions, however, certainly not fast enough to address the urgency of the climate crisis. Electrifying everything can, however, go a long way toward solving the problem — and rapidly. How fast? As fast as appliances need replacing: cars roughly every 10-20 years, home furnaces about every 20 years, and kitchen and laundry appliances every 10-15 years. 

Thankfully, we now have good choices for these replacement purchases, and they are getting better every year. Electric cars currently have good range, are close to cost parity with combustion cars, and save money every mile we drive. Air-source heat pumps for heating, cooling, and hot water now perform four or more times better than traditional appliances. The modern induction cooking experience is better than cooking with gas and is twice as efficient.

Dispersed rooftop solar can be the cheapest energy source, but we make it cost more than it needs to by cumbersome, lengthy permitting and inspection requirements. Whereas the installed cost is around $1 per watt in Australia, it ends up near $3 per watt in the U.S. When the U.S. is fully electrified, 20-30 percent of electricity can be generated locally on rooftops, and the remainder will need to come from wind farms, utility-scale solar farms, geothermal wells, and hydroelectric facilities.

Thinking about addressing climate change can be overwhelming and depressing. Replacing fossil-fuel equipment with electric units will enable us to be and feel part of the solution, without sacrificing the conveniences of modern life. Moreover, the long-term economic benefits are not only in utility bill savings, but in creating jobs. Several studies link 25 million new jobs to mass electrification in the U.S. Many of these will be local.

Once we shift to clean energy, we’ll be able to enjoy all the comforts — warmth, air-conditioning, zippy cars, and hot water — but with lower costs and cleaner air. 

Hempcrete: A Carbon-Negative Insulation

Hempcrete Moderates Indoor Humidity and Temperature, While Being Fire, Mold, and Insect Resistant

The next frontier in green building is emerging as carbon-sequestering materials. Incorporating such materials into tight, energy-efficient building shells has the potential to fully offset the 40 percent of total greenhouse-gas emissions that structures contribute to global warming. One such material is hempcrete, an innovative insulation that is better for people and the planet.

Hempcrete, or hemp lime, as it is sometimes called, is made from the woody core of the cannabis plant combined with lime and water. Hemp is fast-growing (typically 3-4 months), likes a wide range of soil and climate conditions, and requires no pesticides. An acre of hemp can sequester an impressive 10 tons of carbon dioxide, more than an acre of trees can sequester in an entire year. When turned into hempcrete, the carbon remains locked in the inner woody layer. The lime binder also sucks up carbon. However, cultivating it does require a good amount of water.

The insulating value per inch of hemp is comparable to fiberglass insulation (R-2.5-3), yet it has none of the harmful synthetic ingredients that fiberglass and most other commercial insulations contain. Hempcrete acts like a toxic-free sponge that absorbs moisture from the surrounding air when it is humid and releases it again when it is dry. This ever-adjusting behavior creates a healthier relative indoor humidity and an improved sense of comfort. It has good sound-dampening properties that also contribute to good indoor environmental quality.

The use of hempcrete is growing rapidly in Europe. It has been used in Paris since 2012 and is now being government-funded in subsidized social housing projects. It is also getting traction in the U.S. but was hindered by a later start because of the legal ban on all hemp uses, only recently lifted.

Although made from the woody core of Cannabis sativa, hempcrete is highly fire-, mold-, and insect-resistant, due to the lime envelopment of the plant elements. Not surprisingly, all the other parts of the plant can be turned into other products. The only negative for hempcrete seems to be that it costs more than fiberglass insulation, about double, although that differential will diminish as it gains market share. The product comes in various forms: batts, blown-in, blankets, and rigid boards.

Hempcrete is part of a class of composite building materials that has received negative-carbon-material classification, and among these, it is the top negative-carbon performer. Many other building materials are now being made and analyzed for their carbon-storing properties. The optimum is to create carbon-storing buildings that also operate on renewable energy, making them zero-net-energy and zero-net-carbon structures.

Ending Our Addiction to Natural Gas Will Not Be Easy

Addressing Climate Change Needs Workers, Investors, and Innovators to Be Involved

The Philadelphia Gas Works, founded in 1836, is the oldest gas utility in the country and still one of the most substantial with its 6000 miles of service lines and more than half a million customers. The nation’s largest gas utility is our SoCalGas Co. The reality, however, is that today all gas providers are facing existential threats from the quickening energy transition that aims to convert buildings from gas to electricity.

The gas industry has gained several decades of reprieve by promoting gas as the bridge fuel between coal and renewables. Nevertheless, as the urgency to address climate change has increased and the monitoring of methane leaks from gas pipes (three million miles of gas pipelines nationally) has revealed gas to be almost as dirty as coal, time is running out for gas.

Increasingly, cities’ climate action plans are targeting achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner. Banning gas from new construction is a relatively easy first step and will be policy in California in a few years. Much thornier is how to get gas out of existing buildings: Almost 60 percent of the country’s 120 million houses use natural gas.

The first step in a comprehensive approach to decarbonizing the nation’s energy infrastructure would be to improve energy efficiency in equipment and delivery systems and reduce consumption. The second would be to electrify as many cars, space heaters, water heaters, and cooktops as practical, using electricity from renewable sources. The third would be to replace as much natural gas as possible with low-carbon alternatives such as biogas, hydrogen, or synthetic gas (a liquid blend of hydrogen and ammonia or methanol designed for easy transport in existing pipelines), which combust without carbon emissions.

The gas infrastructure is old and in need of repair, but spending on pipeline maintenance above what is required for immediate safety is unwise. One strategy, beyond minimal repairs, is to select a neighborhood, convert it to a clean alternative, and then shut off that section of the gas system, thus reducing the size of the network. Another option is to develop a geothermal district. Ground-source heat pumps can tap temperatures deep underground to provide neighborhood heating and cooling. Installation costs are high, but operating costs are negligible. Gas line rights-of-way could be used for geothermal pipes.

The American Gas Association (and SoCalGas) has promised to use more biogas and create hydrogen/biogas blends. These cleaner alternatives need to be pursued, but costs are high, and scope appears to be limited to supplanting only a fraction of natural-gas use.

Reining in climate change requires many solutions. Gas utilities and the 98,000 workers employed in the gas industry need to be part of the picture. Repairing unsafe infrastructure, developing geothermal systems, and expanding renewable natural gas would use the expertise of many of these workers.