Let’s face it, anything and everything we humans do or make impacts the environment in which we live in some way. It’s just inevitable. The goal, of course, is the to have as little harmful impact as possible so that our world is a cleaner, more sustainable place for us to live, for our children to live and our grand children, too. At Novalis Innovative Flooring, we “get that.” In fact, we do everything possible in the making of our luxury vinyl flooring and the flooring product itself, to be responsible in that way. To be sure, there are a lot of companies that claim that. Novalis actually does it.
One of the ways Novalis strives to be a good environmental steward is by being voluntarily transparent in the manufacturing of our flooring with documentation such as EPD (Environmental Product Declaration).
What is EPD?
According to the website environdec.com, an EPD is “an independently verified and registered document that communicates transparent and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of products.” That means simply that Novalis can vouch for the affect its product will have on the environment so that all of us, either as consumers, purchasers, designers, property managers or architects, will know this and can make a truly informed decision about the LVF we’re purchasing or specifying, whether that’s a NovaFloor style or anything else Novalis makes.
Certification is key
But this isn’t just Novalis saying so. The information in the EPD has to be verified and certified by a third party – and in the case of Novalis, this was done by the prestigious UL (Underwriter Laboratories). In fact, two separate EPDs were independently certified: One for Novalis glue-down LVF and the other for Novalis Click LVF.
According to John Wu, president and CEO of Novalis Innovative Flooring “EPD certification requires complete transparency regarding raw materials, production, packaging, distribution, end-use and disposal. It also looks at our commitment to sustainability and determination to strive for the highest quality standards in everything we do. That’s why the EPD certification is so meaningful to our company and our customers.”
How is it used?
EPD is an international reporting declaration that, according to UL, helps “architects, designers, specifiers, and other purchasers better understand a product’s sustainable qualities and environmental repercussions.” Learn more at http://site.ul.com
Novalis is the only China-based LVF maker with EPD certification, as well as HPD and Declare product labeling. The company invests an incredible amount of time and resources to report and continue to comply with all of these environmental initiatives, because as Wu points out “Our luxury vinyl flooring product is not only good for business, it’s good for our planet.”
Novalis Innovative Flooring was the first Chinese maker of LVF in 1984 and is the only Chinese LVF manufacturer with ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification. The company is a zero-landfill manufacturer and won the GreenStep Process Award at Domotex Asia in 2014.
