When deciding on a floor covering to use, consumers, designers, architects and builders are becoming increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of the products they choose. Hardwood floors are an environmentally friendly floor covering option.
Hardwood flooring is the most abundantly renewable flooring material available. The sustainable forest management practiced in our country today makes it possible to harvest trees without any negative impact on the environment. Only a specific percentage of trees are removed from each forest plot annually which leaves the overall forest ecosystem intact. When larger trees are removed it opens the forest canopy so that the smaller trees have room to grow and can be cut in the next logging cycle. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service states that the average annual net growth for hardwoods is greater than the average annual removals: for every tree harvested, 1.66 is planted. The wood used for the hardwood floors in your home is not a result of clear-cutting; that would not be an economically viable approach for the landowners. Today’s hardwood forests are carefully monitored by foresters and selectively harvested for sustainability. In fact, the number of trees in existence today far exceeds that of the 1950’s.
With the growth in popularity of hardwood flooring over the years, many new wood species have become readily available, including exotic woods from other countries. Many people have become concerned that the hardwood flooring made from these trees is a result of the destruction of the Amazon rain forests. This is not the case. Clear-cutting in the Amazon occurs when the land is cleared for farming, ranching, or mining. The timber industry uses the sustainable approach of selective harvesting. Seed trees of each species are left behind when a forest plot is harvested for natural regeneration and many companies also replant areas that have been cleared in the past.
The landowners and local people that live in the Amazon rain forests need a way to get value from the land. Sustainable forest management by selective logging is one of the best ways to add value to the rain forest land. It provides the people with an incentive to preserve the standing rain forest rather than convert it to land for farming, ranching, or mining. When purchasing hardwood flooring from tropical woods, you are helping preserve the Amazon rain forests by providing value to the land and jobs for the local people.
