Lancaster, Pa.—Armstrong Flooring’s product redesign project, Product Waste Reduction though Circularity Improvement, received the Top Project of the Year Award in the Environment + Energy Leader Awards program. The Environment + Energy Leader Awards is a program recognizing excellence in products and services that provide companies with energy and environmental benefits and in projects that improved environmental or energy management and increased the bottom line.
“Making products more sustainable begins with product design,” said Amy Costello, sustainability manager at Armstrong Flooring. “This project is a perfect example of how the principles of circular economy can reduce environmental impacts both at the point of manufacture and embodied in the product.”
Armstrong Flooring said it redesigned the felt-backed vinyl sheet flooring product, which has been manufactured in Stillwater, Okla., since 1987. The Top Project of the Year-awarded redesign replaced the traditional felt backing with a fiberglass scrim. By changing the backing, the company said it was able to achieve its project objective to reduce, if not eliminate, process waste.
As part of the project, Armstrong installed a new granulator to recycle sheet flooring scrap. By the end of 2020, the redesign project eliminated approximately 150 tons of sheet flooring process waste being sent to the landfill and improved the plant’s overall annual waste recovery rate, according to the company.