A well-established range of environmental innovations from the flooring industry have successfully been absorbed across different industries in recent years. It is these developments that are collectively reducing our impact on the planet, and further advances in flooring are paving the way for the education sector to take ever greater steps to sustainability.

The latest, and perhaps even one of the most significant developments, is the ability to renew resilient flooring. In years past, this would never have been possible and so it is a major turning point, particularly for universities where resilient flooring such as vinyl, PVC, linoleum, and rubber, are used extensively across many areas of the estate due to their durability and hard- wearing properties. Resilient flooring surfaces are commonly found in many areas across campuses, in hallways, entryways, sports floors, canteens, kitchens, classrooms, and beyond to student accommodation. For education facilities teams, when a surface of this type looked highly worn and damaged, there was traditionally one option; to rip out the flooring and replace with brand new material. This route comes with a heavy price tag, not only from a financial perspective, but it is also incredibly damaging to the environment as often, old flooring ends up in landfill.

Today across all part of our lives we are more open to ways we can reuse, recycle and renovate to reduce wastage and ultimately minimise our impact on the environment, and this way of thinking equally applies to what lies underfoot. Even in instances when a resilient floor surface is in very bad condition, it can almost always be renewed. In contrast to ‘brand new’ options, renewing a surface has the same final result, but is substantially more cost-effective and incomparably better for the environment. Recently, Bona spearheaded a unique collaboration with the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute which quantified and verified the positive effects of floor renovation. The study was a cradle-to-grave assessment, which considered the whole life cycle for renovated and new flooring; including extraction, production, and transportation of raw materials and products, installation of flooring and renovation as well as end of life management of products and waste streams.

The report found that refinishing resilient floor surfaces creates a 92 per cent reduction in carbon footprint versus replacing, and generates energy savings as high as 95 per cent. A refinished resilient floor has an impact on climate change of 1.14 kg carbon dioxide equivalents per m2. Compared to a newly installed floor that uses an average of 11.42 kg, this produces a carbon footprint that is more than ten times lower for a renovated floor. With thousands of square meters covered with resilient surfaces in the HE sector, a development of this nature, prevents significant volumes of unwanted products being disposed in landfill sites. Another aspect that facilities teams favour is that a renewed floor is expected to last equally as long as a new floor before it is worn and in need of maintenance, and it has the added bonus that the entire process can be undertaken between two and four times before it must be replaced with new. Our growing interest in renovation across industries is likely to grow, as is the latest eco-friendly trend of going green from the ground up. Refurbishment programmes across university estates must look to factor in this option to reduce costs (it is 50% cheaper than renewal), and improve efficiencies (there is less disruption to educational schedules as downtime is 50% less compared to a brand new installation), and of course to support their green credentials in a completely new way.

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