I have no kitchen floor.
I have a nice level subfloor dating back to the 1860’s, and
it might even be the most level part of the house. That’s not to say it’s level
— but I’ll take it. The finished floor I pulled up was worn-through plastic
tile (polyethelene) glued down with cheap mastic. Could these have been peel
and stick tiles? Ew. At any rate these tiles are now in a Columbia County
landfill for the next foreseeable thousand years.
So it would be nice to finish this kitchen floor with an
environmentally friendly tile material. Commitment to sustainability should be
practiced and demonstrated at home, and I’m a believer in the moral consistency
of practicing what you preach in this regard. I am also trained in this issue,
having a WELL certification, having passed my LEED accreditation — the
professional markers of a commitment level where I should take this question
seriously.
And yet my kitchen floor.
It shouldn’t be a challenge. I could replace the plastic
tile with linoleum, an environmentally sound material. Biodegradable but a fairly
tough floor, this would be an excellent solution. Linoleum is a natural product
with a pressed linseed oil binder, with flax and wood flour as the body for a
resilient, a long-lasting product. My alternative would be a vinyl composition
tile (VCT) sold by the big box stores. This material is compressed polyvinyl
chloride (PVC) with fibers added in for reinforcement, so… definitely not an
environmental approach.
Initially the choice seems easy. But in taking a look at purchasing
the tiles, I see that the US producer of linoleum tile only distributes their
product in 60 square foot cartons. This is reasonable for larger markets of
commercial installations. But since my kitchen floor is 120 square feet, this
means that a cutting allowance of 10% pushes my purchase to the next carton, or
180 square feet of material. Cost? At $5.00 a square foot, and $120 delivery,
my linoleum floor would be $1020. The delivery time is 5 days.
Let’s look at VCT. It certainly looks the same as the
neutral gray linoleum tile that I would like, but this tile is available for
$.86 a square foot. That tops out at a total of $103.20. Why no delivery
charge? The big box store that sells it and has it in stock 24 hours a day is
located a short walk from the house.
But it also has an advantage in sustainability: I can buy
the tiles individually. I can buy them one at a time if that makes me happy. I
can order exactly 105 square feet hoping to get lucky with the layout and cuts,
and play a game of how few tiles I actually need (gamifying the repetitive
stuff in a renovation is helpful to maintain sanity, FYI). So I won’t overorder I will underorder, and
pick up a piece or two should I need it. This doesn’t sound like it would be a
huge deal but actually it’s environmentally critical: with the order of
linoleum, I am forced to landfill another 60 tiles (or come up with craft
projects that use the rest of the tiles…linoleum tile Christmas gifts?). Add
another $30 for the carting expense.
So the environmental response is more expensive by a factor
of $10.17 a linoleum tile for every $1 you would spend on the VCT tile. Consider
that fabricating either option requires electrical energy to create the product
and fuel to transport it. It’s not as if the linoleum has less embodied carbon
in its production – it’s that it’s source materials are sound. Factor in the
1/3 of the linoleum that will end up in a landfill or as sad Christmas gifts.
The result is an excruciating choice. A ten to one cost
ratio with a large pile of trash in a landfill is not a viable way to approach
every given choice in sourcing materials. This real-world exercise shows the
challenge you face in circumstances that are simply not on the LEED exam, not
anywhere in the WELL standards. My grey tiles show the issues that make the
selection of environmental products problematic: distribution chains, lot
sizes, etc. I wish the choices instead were as clear cut, but in this case the
material itself is dominated by hidden expenses.
So which should I choose? How would you approach this? The
work on this question is for all of us, isn’t it?
