Teknoflor Naturescapes HPD by Shannon Specialty Floors, launched for specification at NeoCon 2018, became the first resilient flooring product to achieve Petal Certification under the Living Product Challenge (LPC).

The LPC is a product certification program, advocacy tool, and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability and transparency in product manufacturing today. The Challenge is comprised of 20 imperatives spread across seven petals (performance categories): Place, Water, Energy, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty.

Teknoflor’s Naturescapes HPD is the brand’s first luxury organic sheet flooring made from organically-derived polyurethane processed from castor oil. This resilient sheet flooring product has all the advantages of resilient sheet vinyl—durability, easy maintenance and versatility—but without the PVC.

“Naturescapes is a big leap forward for the resilient flooring category, and I think it is fantastic to see how the product is already creating a ripple effect of positive changes in the flooring industry and beyond,” said Jason McLennan, founder of McLennan Design and the Living Product Challenge, who collaborated with Shannon to work through its Living Product Certification.

Teknoflor Naturescapes HPD has received Petal certification as a result of Shannon’s completion of sixteen imperatives within the Place, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty petals. Full LPC certification requires meeting established criteria in all twenty imperatives. The company has aspirations to achieve full certification with Naturescapes HPD by the end of 2018.

Currently sold throughout the United States by Shannon Specialty Floors and designed and sourced by Metroflor, Naturescapes HPD has an LBC-Compliant Declare label (a nutrition label for building products). While both Shannon and Metroflor have a long history of safe and sustainable practices, they worked with organizations and collaborations like the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC), and mindful MATERIALS to expand the environmental business focus at each company to include transparency and material health.

This led the two companies to examine their corporate culture and the products they bring to market, while also allowing them to set precedents in the resilient flooring industry. Shannon Specialty Floors became the first company in the flooring industry to receive a JUST label, while Metroflor Corporation’s Aspecta division became the first to receive a JUST label for a factory based in China. Metroflor was the first company to have Declare labels issued in six languages for several of its Aspecta commercial flooring products, and was the first to have a Declare label issued for a multilayer modular flooring product.

Shannon and Metroflor set the goal of achieving the the Living Product Challenge (LPC), which would require an alternative to PVC-flooring. This made Teknoflor Naturescapes HPD, the polyurethane sheet flooring product that the two companies had been developing in conjunction with Windmöller GmbH, the natural choice for LPC certification. Over the course of several months, Shannon, Metroflor, Windmöller GmbH and Sustainability Consulting—a firm whose employees had extensive experience as LPC assessors and consultants—poured extensive time and resources into the Living Product Challenge to achieve their goal.

“There has been a lot of greenwashing in the industry and a lot of companies who have been making environmental statements, so I think the certification adds a higher level of rigor and accountability to transparency so that specifiers have something beyond marketing to hang their hat on so they can be more confident that this is something they should recommend to to their clients and meets their environmental goals and we need that greater clarity in this industry,” McLennon said. “The leading companies get it, at least on a high level, and there is a lot more awareness now than there used to be.”

“By fully embracing the LPC, Metroflor, Shannon Specialty Floors, and the Teknoflor brand are responding to marketplace demand for healthy materials,” added James Connelly, director of the Living Product Challenge for ILFI.

For more information, visit www.shannonspecialtyfloors.com.