Tarkett is one of the world’s leading flooring manufactures and has been in Australia for 40 years. They were started in France 130 years ago and employ 12,000 people across the world in 34 factories.
They recently launched in Australia, iQ ONE flooring range, which is purpose-designed to improve the air quality and living standards across healthcare, aged care and education facilities.
The product has recently achieved Green Tag Level A Certificate issued by Global Green Tag, adding to its status as the world’s first homogenous flooring product to earn a Cradle to Cradle® Gold level certification by the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute.
Following on from this has been the release of the 2016 Towards Building That Thrive Report authored by the Thrive Research Hub at The University of Melbourne. The report addresses the need to develop building design and construction practices and interior materials that promote healthier and sustainable commercial spaces, with a focus on indoor air quality.
In an exclusive interview with Inside Construction Ralph Jorissen, Managing Director of Tarkett Australasia discusses iQ ONE and how it is revolutionising flooring in the construction sector.
What is specific about iQ ONE flooring?
iQ ONE is a floor covering that combines three important aspects of flooring. Firstly, it targets the indoor air quality, which allows for an increase in living standards. Secondly, it is the first homogenous flooring that has been certified Cradle to Cradle® Gold level certification. Thirdly, it has a strong return on investment combined with a very affective design.
Where is it manufactured?
It is being manufactured in Sweden and has been worked on by the Research & Development Department at Tarkett. It’s not an easy product to put together so it took a while. This is a product that goes into hospitals and healthcare facilities, aged-care facilities and educational facilities, so you want to make sure the product ticks all the boxes when it comes to durability. We don’t take products to market too easily and we test extensively.
How has this product been purpose designed?
This is part of the philosophy Tarkett has adopted since 2009, when we started working with the Cradle to Cradle principal. It’s around making sure from the design phase you use raw materials that allow us after the product has been installed and used in the facility, to take the product afterwards and put it back in the production process. This is a design that allows us to sell a product today that becomes the raw material for tomorrow.
This is anticipating the fact that in the next 20-30 years, with growth population, and with the amount of flooring sold across the world, raw materials are going to become an issue. We just want to make sure the products are not going to landfill but back into a Tarkett factory so we can reprocess them as materials. With this product we can do that 100%.
What does a Green Tag A Level Certification mean?
That means you are meeting standards when it comes to environment and when it comes to indoor air quality, so in order to get to that point you can’t go above certain levels when it comes to Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). We sit 50 times below the industry average, which is very good. It is a product based on a phthalate-free recipe, which is important again for indoor air quality. It’s non-PVC and based on a patent pending recipe of thermal plastics, which still allows the floor to last up to 20-25 years in spaces with heavy foot traffic. That takes effort to achieve and replace raw materials you have been using in the past, while still allowing it to perform well.
Is the product only used in healthcare and education facilities?
No, the product is getting noticed in the residential construction sector. There are designs that replicate polished concrete that will be liked for residential applications. Also again, because it’s a product strong on the indoor air quality side, it’s a great product to have in your home. Other aspects are its more comfortable than polished concrete because it feels more comfortable underfoot and is easy to maintain and is priced well, if you compare it to polished concrete, which is very expensive.
Why is it important to have sustainable material in the construction sector?
There are two reasons why we must look at sustainable products. Firstly, if you put materials into landfill it’s going to take a while to break down and the planet requires a lot of space for the additional people we are going to have to continue to accommodate.
Secondly, we will run out of raw materials at a certain stage. It’s not endlessly available. If you run 34 factories then there will be a time when it’s important to get your hands on the waste stream or the recycling stream otherwise it’s not enough to service your customers. It’s forward thinking and people think this is hundreds of years away but we are talking more like decades that this is going to start to happen.
Is Australia embracing this new product?
We are already in talks with architects and designers when it comes to aged-care facilities, education facilities and hospitals. For the people working in those environments they are also exposed to the floor the whole day and when you have a product that ticks all the boxes when it comes to indoor air quality it’s not just important for the students or the patients, it’s also important for the people working in those facilities 30-40 hours a week.
A new product needs to find its place but we are pretty confident that in 2017, we will see quite a few installations using this product.
What is the product made from and how is it laid?
This is a product based on thermoplastic. It is phthalate free and has very low VOCs. It has a PUR wear layer and is a product that is extremely easy to maintain. It doesn’t require a lot of chemicals for cleaning. This is also part of the Cradle to Cradle philosophy. We can develop a great product but the glue needed to install it has to also be sustainable. If the glue is non-sustainable then that doesn’t make sense. It all needs to match up.
This is produced on rolls that are 2 metres wide, 2 millimetres thick and comes in 38 different colours and patterns. It is glued to the floor and most of the time the base is concrete. Once installed, with the correct maintenance regime, it can last up to 20-25 years. It’s important it has longevity for the types of facilities it’s being used in.
What do you do when the product is ready for recycling?
We have a program called Restart. We make sure we can collect material that is at the end of its life and get it back to the factory where we can process it. We can use it to produce new product again.
What are VOCs and what impact do they have?
Volatile Organic Compound. A lot of building materials when they are produced are off-gassing so what we do in flooring, after installation at around day 28, we measure the amount of VOCs. The beauty of IQ ONE is after 28 days you can hardly measure any VOCs. It’s almost non-quantifiable which is important in indoor environments because they can have an impact on people who are suffering from asthma and young children who are still developing. It can also impact on people in aged care facilities and hospitals where they are in contact with the product all day. People spend 90% of their time indoors in those facilities so you have to make sure the environment is safe and healthy and that’s how we contribute.
Architects and designers have a duty of care these days to make sure that products tick certain boxes. This is an element that is on the radar more now than say 20-30 years ago, and we just want to make sure we can go as low as possible.
Why is it important for the future that construction material is sustainable?
If you look at future trends people come to live in cities, so the future of urbanisation is continuing to grow. That means that the outdoor environment in cities is not that great but the time you spend indoors you want to make sure the indoor air quality can improve. You can see the trend at the moment where people put more plants in indoor offices or there are green walls. More time and effort is spent now ensuring the air conditioning system is a good system. But if you ignore what you put on the floor, you are doing stuff on the one hand that is being neutralised on the other hand
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