Sustainable flooring

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We provide our customers with solvent-free, safe and low-emission products and incorporate environmentally friendly solutions throughout the business. Our products are ideal for environmental building initiatives such as BREEAM or LEED and can provide environmental product declarations (EPD) for a range of products. We keep an eye on our products throughout the entire product life cycle from mining the raw materials, though to production and disposal. We are committed to reducing waste and recycling, therefore launching Cube It Simple recyclable boxes for some products instead of plastic bottles. Where plastic does have to be used we use plastic buckets and bottles which can be recycled.

Find the UZIN UTZ Group's sustainability policy and sustainability report here

Green building and building certification

The building industry uses a great deal of natural resources and sustainable buildings are therefore becoming more important. Environmental building initiatives examine the life cycle impact as well as the ecological, social and economic factors.

Green building certifications are becoming more established. In the UK BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) is used as the British green building certification system and is sometimes used in other European countries. The American LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) system is also spreading into many other countries such as the UK. In Germany, the assessment system is the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB).

Considering the criteria for building products, the topic of indoor air quality plays a huge role in all building certification systems. For example, in the DGNB system, flooring materials have to meet the EMICODE EC 1 or the Blue Angel to allow them to be used in DGNB building projects.

If you’d like to know more please contact us.

UZIN CUBE it simple – new packaging, many Advantages.

Green buildings with UZIN.

Environmental product declaration EPD

What impact does a product actually have on the environment? This and other questions can be answered in an “environmental product declaration". Environmental product declarations (EPD) are documents that quantify the environmental properties of a product over its entire life cycle. For this purpose, an EPD is based on the method of Life Cycle Assessment (see the box further down).

An EPD contains, in a few pages the ecological characteristics of a product over its full life cycle. An EPD can be drawn on as an environmental information system based on indicators for the basic requirements made on constructions in relation to environmental protection and sustainability in the context of the construction products regulation. The contents of the EPD are defined by the ISO 14040 and ISO 14025 international standards which means that similar products are comparable in terms of their ecological indicators. Before approval and publication, an EPD is validated by an independent expert to ensure the accuracy of the document's contents and therefore its credibility. Technical aspects, proofs and tests, such as emission behaviour and fire protection, are documented as well.

In the context of green building, EPDs are a crucial requirement for building certification (such as BREEAM), because they provide credible, comparable information inspected by independent experts about the environment performance of products.

UZIN have several products which have Environmental Product Declarations. All EPDs, and other information about this topic, can be found here.

The new generation of UZIN ÖKOLINE products

With "Blue Angel" and EMICODE EC 1 PLUS

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the UZIN ÖKOLINE has stood for solvent free & low-emission products. Nothing about that has changed to this day. On the contrary the new generation of products have been awarded both EMICODE EC 1 PLUS and "Blue Angel" certification. For green building certification the range of UZIN ÖKOLINE are ideal. For more information view the video below or click here

Life Cycle Assessment

LCA – Life Cycle Assessment

Life Cycle Assessment, examines the entire life cycle of a product, from harvesting and making the raw materials, to generating power and manufacturing products, to application, waste management, disposal and everything in between. It covers all factors such as as raw materials, energy, as well as waste and emissions into the environment. The data collected is then used to generate performance indicators that describe the resulting strains on the environment. For example, the performance indicator for global warming potential (or “GWP” for short) represents the quantity of carbon dioxide generated throughout the entire product life cycle, and the climate-damaging potential of the product.