Is hardwood flooring bad for the environment? This is not a rhetorical question. I recently learned that in parts of Europe there exists a persistent belief that cutting down trees to make hardwood flooring is a waste of natural resources and bad for the environment. The reason for this misconception, what is being done about it and what wood flooring manufacturers can do to promote the truth about the positive role of hardwood flooring in carbon storage are topics of this post; but first, some general information to set the stage. Trees are carbon storage containers and a primary tool in the process of carbon sequestration . As trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide. They release the oxygen into the environment and sequester the carbon. In fact, up to half of a tree’s dry weight is carbon. When timber is transformed into durable products, like flooring, the carbon remains in the wood and is transferred to the flooring which becomes a long-term carbon storage container (or “si
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