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BDU Cork Flooring College™
Natural Cork Flooring: Easy Bein' Green
What you will learn: The renewable nature of natural cork flooring;
general uses for cork as an available material; harvesting practices for
natural cork flooring; potential health benefits for natural cork flooring
In the last decade or so, the issues surrounding renewable resources have come
to the forefront in the minds of many and in the marketplace. Not to sacrifice
on beauty and durability, natural cork flooring has become a more and more
popular choice for the "green" consumer who wants both, and its wide
availability has made making the choice of renewable building materials for
flooring an even easier one than ever before.
Natural cork flooring is a versatile building material out of which many
household and commercial flooring applications have been made, to the
satisfaction of homeowners and building managers. One of the main draws of
natural cork flooring is its renewability, taken from the bark of the cork oak
and processed as flooring with no damage to the original plant. In addition to
its environmentally friendly reputation, cork flooring’s benefits of durability
and attractiveness are not lessened by its "green" attributes, making cork
flooring an extremely viable choice for any flooring application. Cork is
recyclable as well as biodegradable, and no synthetic material can match it in
terms of function or feel. Natural cork is a unique material, worthy for use in
many applications, and particularly for flooring.
Popular usage of natural cork
Possibly the most well-known application of cork is for use as wine stoppers,
cork being an excellent moisture-resistant insulator. Other applications, used
for thousands of years, ranged from bottle stoppers of all sorts to fishing net
floats, and footwear. Because of its renewability and availability in places
like Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, diverse civilizations with equally
diverse uses were able to rely upon cork. Now, in the modern age, the benefits
of natural cork flooring have become not only more widely used, but more widely
understood as a flooring option with exceptional benefits, both environmental
and utilitarian.
Harvested Product
Natural cork flooring is one of many products made from the cork oak’s bark,
which is harvested in specified intervals of nine years from harvest to harvest
in order to ensure the health of the cork oak species. This standard is
strictly observed and enforced.
Flooring and other applications come out of a processing standard whereby none
of the cork that is harvested is discarded. The best of the cork, once it is
processed into slabs, is used for wine corks. This results in a slab full of
holes, made from punching out these items. The remainder of the natural cork is
ground, baked, and reconstituted in order to make other items, including
natural cork flooring planks and tiles. This process illustrates another level
of economy for natural cork – a diverse list of applications, and an efficient
use of a natural resource with no wastage.
Your Healthy Environment
Not only is natural cork flooring the result of a strict, environmentally
friendly harvesting process, natural cork flooring is also a great solution for
keeping your own residential or commercial environment a healthier one.
Microbes of various kinds, as well as molds and insects, cannot find easy
purchase on the surface of natural cork flooring. In this, for allergy
sufferers, natural cork flooring has a natural advantage when you are choosing
the best type of flooring that is not only friendly to the environment, but to
your health as well.
Natural cork flooring has been used for centuries partially due to its
availability, out of which renewability is a major factor. Today, the
importance of renewability has become undeniable, balanced against a flooring
solution that is both attractive and lasting. In natural cork flooring, all of
these prerequisites are in place, providing a residential and commercial
flooring solution that makes it very easy to be green!
Back to Cork Flooring College
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Dynastic China
– Cork is used by fisherman for their nets, in a way similar to its use today
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Pharaonic Egypt
– Corks are used as stoppers for bottles, showing cork to be an ideal solution
for this application from then to now
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Ancient Greece
– Cork is used as the soles of sandals, as crowns, as buoys for Greek ships.
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1600s in Europe
– A handy device is invented: the Corkscrew!
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18th Century Europe
– A monk named Dom Perignon used cork, an ideal natural insulator, as means of
keeping in air bubbles in his first batches of champagne.
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Late 19th century
– Natural cork used as flooring is introduced on the world market
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Early 20th Century America – Buildings in the era of Frank Lloyd Wright
used natural cork flooring in banks, and other public buildings, including many
prominent government buildings
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