Sustainable Flooring Advice for World Environment Day

n support of this year’s World Environment Day , Flowcrete India has compiled the following advice on how large-scale construction projects can specify a sustainable floor finish.

June 5th will mark World Environment Day (WED), an event organised by the United Nation’s Environment Programme to help raise awareness of environmental issues and this year the spotlight is on sustainable consumption and production.

As the UN’s principal vehicle for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the environment, WED serves as the ‘people’s day’ for doing something positive for the environment, galvanizing individual actions into a collective power that generates a positive impact on the planet.

The slogan this year is "Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care". The well being of humanity, the environment and the functioning of the economy ultimately depend upon the responsible management of the planet’s natural resources.

Flowcrete is supporting the day by promoting the importance of sustainability in the construction industry.  To symbolise the company’s commitment to this message, Flowcrete India’s staff took part in a tree planting campaign in Chennai’s Dr. MGR Janaki Educational Institute. On the 5thJune, in an event organised by the NGO environmental service organisation ExNoRa International, Flowcrete employees planted several tree saplings after taking a pledge of environmental responsibility.

The resin flooring specialists already have long running  environmentally friendly initiatives, such as the use of IBC Containers to reduce waste, products containing low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a number of recycled materials from industrial waste streams are incorporated into its manufacturing processes and Flowcrete’s local sourcing of raw materials reduces the carbon footprint of its products.

Usually during the course of construction, lots of waste ends up in landfill sites. The industry is also responsible for the intensive use of energy both directly in the creation of buildings and infrastructure and also indirectly in the operational phase.

However sustainability can be achieved by practising the Four R’s - Reducing, Reusing, Recovering and Recycling. Restoring and reusing a building requires less energy than building a new one, rehabilitating buildings saves landfill space, preserving a building saves the embodied energy (energy used to operate, construct and demolish) that was used to build and maintain it.

A major barrier affecting the adaptability of sustainable technologies in the construction industry is the common misconception that greener products have a higher product cost. However, sustainable building materials often have a longer life expectancy than alternative systems and therefore the initial capital investment needs to be compared with the total lifecycle of the structure.

As well as improved life cycle costing, there are numerous economic benefits of sustainable construction, such as: minimal carbon output and utility costs, reduced maintenance requirements and an overall improvement in the building’s performance and efficiency.

The use of BIM (Building Information Modelling) technology in the construction industry is helping to improve green building practises. By enabling architects to create a digital model or prototype before the actual construction commences, BIM allows for more informed decision making in the design process - evaluating the green properties of different design options and streamlining access to important information.  

Despite the fact that advances in environmental practices are being made all the time, for many businesses there is still much room for improvement in terms of accelerating the overall building performance. Companies need to understand that implementing proper planning and adopting the correct environmental construction practices can bring total project costs down in the long term.