How sustainable are we in our daily lives? Are we ready to become more responsible consumers? What actions can we take?
Companies are trying to find some answers by teaming up with academia to find imaginative solutions that tackle both sustainability and climate change. Among them, Swedish company Bolon is hoping to help in this quest thanks to its Botanic collection of woven vinyl flooring launched during last year’s Stockholm Furniture Fair.
Botanic offers a range of floor coverings containing plasticisers made from 100% renewable raw materials, obtained from modified vegetable oils. This development is part of Bolon®’s Green Vinyl initiative, a strategic objective aimed at offering a fully environmentally friendly and climate-neutral product.
“With the launch of our Botanic collection in 2010, Bolon has established an important foothold in the flooring sector,” explains Torbjörn Klaesson, Bolon’s technical manager. No pun intended.
Bolon is a woven floorings manufacturer founded in 1949, present in more than 30 countries and known to be a world leader on high quality innovative floorings. Now, it is leading in sustainability too.
“The Botanic collection is essential in our wish to minimise the environmental impact of our products. By using plasticisers from renewable sources, we have been able to reduce our carbon footprint still further,” says Klaesson.
Bolon was very proactive in utilising the latest R&D findings from academia in Sweden to prove that the time between laboratory results and launching a commercial product can be very short when flexibility and decisiveness are combined.
“The technology used in the Botanic range has also reduced to virtually zero the use of thermal stabilisers in the manufacture of synthetic floorings. We have been helped here by the rapid analysis of university research results and the implementation of these in our production proces,.” Klaesson adds.
So how do they do it? Strips of calendered foils are woven with extruded threads using a technique similar to textile weaving. The back surface of this flooring is finished with a plastisol process.
It’s a triple contribution as a project: one for science, showing that modified vegetable oils work as excellent plasticisers in production lines; one for the environment, given the lower carbon footprint; and one for the image of PVC as a sustainable product.
With the introduction of the Botanic collection, Bolon’s wishes to show that their articles continue to be more than ever very interesting and competitive alternatives to traditional carpets, especially with such an advanced designed flooring product.
The future? Well, it’s hard to have a crystal ball that actually works, but Bolon does plan to extend the Botanic line to upcoming collections to keep walking what they weave.
Please press here for images. Scroll down to Botanic or further down for images of Annica and Marie.
