Tarkett Flooring
Courtesy Tarkett

A Green New Chapter

With circular economy initiatives, carbon cuts, and a ramped-up recycling program, Tarkett opens a second phase of its sustainability strategy.

Tarkett is a sponsor of the 2021 Metropolis Perspective: Sustainability Symposium

“In many cases we have exceeded our 2020 objectives, developing circular economy initiatives, reducing our carbon footprint and eco-designing our products with healthy materials,” says CEO Fabrice Barthélemy, reflecting on the 140-year-old flooring brand’s 2020 corporate social and environmental responsibility report.

Over the last decade the brand has taken back 109,000 tons of flooring as a part of their Restart® take-back and recycling program in Europe, North America, and Brazil. They’ve slashed their greenhouse gas emissions by 27 percent, and applied Cradle to Cradle® principles to their manufacturing, with over 20 C2C certifications and third-party assessments for 98 percent of the raw materials they use.

Tarkett EcoVadis
Courtesy Tarkett

With ten years of accomplishments, Tarkett is setting even higher goals. Targeting raw materials and carbon emissions, the flooring brand hopes to use 30 percent recycled materials by 2030 compared with only 10 percent in 2018. Nine recycling centers they’ve integrated into their production sites around the world will help with converting old flooring into recycled raw materials.

Meanwhile additional carbon cuts are expected to bring the company’s carbon footprint down by 30 percent. In addition to minimizing their own carbon footprint, Tarkett is making flooring products that help architects and designers reduce the embodied carbon footprint of their projects. Partnering with Carbonfund, they’ve created the industry’s largest portfolio of third-party verified carbon neutral flooring solutions, which includes all the designs in their Powerbond, ethos® Modular with Omnicoat Technology®, rubber tile, rubber sports flooring, homogeneous sheet and tile, heterogeneous sheet and tile, and LVT collections manufactured in the United States.

Courtesy Tarkett

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