If your quartz tile flooring is looking a little worse for wear, you have two options: refinish or replace. If you want to make the choice that benefits both the environment and your budget, refinishing is the way to go. The first step in reducing your business or institution’s carbon footprint is reducing waste. Rikett flooring products are sustainable and resilient, making them easy to refinish and rarely necessary to replace.
Let’s take a look at how refinishing flooring reduces your carbon footprint and why quartz tile is the ideal choice for sustainability.
Understanding Carbon Footprints
First, let’s clarify what we mean by the term “carbon footprint.” A carbon footprint refers to the total greenhouse gas emissions generated by an individual, organization, event, or product. These gases include carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are known to cause climate change within the atmosphere.
While the calculation of a specific carbon footprint depends on several factors, numerous resources are available to help you determine your own. For example, the University of California, Berkeley’s CoolClimate Network offers a calculator that helps individuals assess their personal impact on global warming through a series of questions.
Reduce New Material Use by Refinishing
Now that we have a better understanding of what we mean by carbon footprint, let’s get back to flooring. In 2020, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute conducted a 12-month study on the effects of refinishing versus replacing flooring. This study found that refinishing floors rather than replacing them resulted in a 78% reduction in carbon footprint. They also found that refinishing resilient flooring materials, such as quartz tile, could result in a 92% reduction in carbon footprint.
Refinishing Rikett Quartz Tile (RQT) is simple thanks to Rikettseal™, a commercial-grade, UV-cured polyurethane coating. Applying this coating to your quartz tile can significantly extend the lifespan of your flooring. Periodically recoating your floors will restore high-traffic areas to their original resilience.
Sustainable Materials Are Safe Materials
At Rikett, we recognize that product sustainability and customer safety go hand in hand. By reducing our carbon footprint through innovative flooring solutions, we can offer a safe, environmentally friendly, and high-quality product. Since our company’s inception in 1952, we have designed our quartz flooring products to be an alternative to homogeneous tiles that utilize harmful materials. For over 50 years, we have continued our commitment to safety and sustainability.
