Surface Plus and the environment

As trees grow using photosynthesis they absorb carbon monoxide and exude oxygen. Younger trees are more photosynthetically-efficient than older trees. This means that careful forestry management can reduce CO2 and global warming.

Sustainable forestry management ensures that felled trees are replaced. Organisations such as the FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) monitor forest management and ensure that trees are from sustainable sources. They have also formulated rules for good forestry management which also take into account the interests of the local communities and forest workers. Using wood products, from sustainabley-managed sources, encourages forests to expand and increases the carbon sink effect, reducing the C02 in the atmosphere. Wooden flooring will last more than a lifetime if it’s properly maintained. A light routine of sweeping is all that is needed to keep it looking good day to day and using a suitable hardwood cleaner, we ensure that your floor will last.

The wide range of wood types has of course various applications. We can help you with professional advice. For each application for which you currently use an environmentally-unfriendly tropical wood, we believe we can hopefully supply you with an ecologically-sound alternative.

Wooden floors can support "green living" and they’re good for allergy sufferers because they deter dust and carpet mites.

Bamboo

When we supply bamboo flooring we consider the following points:

  • Determining how environmentally friendly a product is, is not usually easy although bamboo is generally considered to be environmentally positive.
  • Every year the parent bamboo plant develops new stems that, in a mature plantation, can be harvested after five years without decreasing the size of the forest. Regular harvesting makes bamboo more vigorous and produces even more growth for the following year‚Äôs harvest. Farmers on plantations manage a large part of the Phyllostachys Pubescens reservoir. The farmer marks his "ownership" and notes the year of origin on every new stem.
  • The processing of bamboo strips to make flooring and panels uses energy that is produced by burning of sawdust and bamboo scraps.
  • Our European suppliers guarantee that all glues used meet requirements stipulated in the El norm.
  • Giant and Small Pandas live in the mountains of central China. Pandas go to places where the lower species of bamboo are easily accessible. Our supplied bamboo, Phyllostachys Pubescens, has no leaf growth on the first five metres of the stem and is therefore not a source of food for the Panda.
  • Our suppliers only use bamboo from plantations managed by farmers in the Chinese provinces Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui and Jiangxi, which are far away from Panda communities.

Further information

If you would like to find out more about the sustainable use of timber we recommend these websites:

Bamboo stalks Cut bamboo Cut bamboo