Corporate Floors 2014 Annual Stewardship Report Published

Environmental and community stewardship isn’t a new concept at Corporate Floors – it’s been our way of life since we started in 1997. We pride ourselves on not just offering a breadth of responsible solutions for our clients, but by “walking the talk” when it comes to sustainability and community involvement. It is our goal to be good corporate citizens of the community where we work and the earth on which we live.

Corporate Floors is pleased to report the following results from our stewardship and community efforts in 2014

MilliCare

Corporate Floors has been a MilliCare provider, the most environmentally sound cleaning process for carpet and textiles, for more than 17 years.

In 2014 alone, Corporate Floors serviced approximately 53 million square feet of carpet (up from 40 million in 2013) using MilliCare, resulting in the following savings (compared to a hot water extraction cleaning method):

Water Savings:

• 2,280,779 gallons – equivalent of 114,039 showers
• 12% savings

Electricity Savings:

• 334,965 kilowatt hours of energy – equivalent of 13,728 days of power for the average home
• 99% savings

Emissions Savings:

• 09 carbon tons – equivalent of 22,966 gallons of gas
• 99% savings

Source: MilliCare Environmental Impact Calculator

Carpet Recycling

Realizing the need for sustainable end-of-life solutions for commercial carpet, we created Texas Carpet Recycling (TCR) in 2007. As the first carpet recycling company in the state of Texas, TCR has allowed Corporate Floors to divert all used carpet from all commercial projects we’ve managed in the state – all at the same cost as taking the product to a landfill.   Through TCR and our partnerships with StarNet and the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), Corporate Floors saw the following results for carpet reclamation and recycling in 2014:

Quantity Diverted from Landfill: 2,344,148 sq. feet (up from 1.6M s/f in 2013)

Equivalent number of pounds reclaimed/diverted: 1,669,598 lbs

Cubic Yards of landfill saved: 8,245

Source: Corporate Floors reclamation log

Note: Commercial carpet makes up a small % of the overall carpet recycled in the United States and Corporate Floors is proud to be one of the largest carpet recyclers in the United States.  Approximately 60% of commercial carpet collected can be truly recycled back in to end use products while the other 40% collected is shredded and burned in waste to energy facilities in lieu of natural resources such as coal and oil..  While waste to energy is not recognized by many as a favorable recycling method, we feel that it is a better alternative to landfilling until technology catches up and provides a viable way to recycle some of these low value products. 

Packaging Recycling

We not only reclaim used carpet from our commercial projects, we also recycle packaging from the installation of new products. In 2014, Corporate Floors recycled more than 31 tons of cardboard and plastic packaging resulting from the installation of new carpet (up from 20 tons in 2013).

Community Involvement:

The Corporate Floors team also spends hundreds of hours each year volunteering with several organizations to help make our business community and the world more sustainable:

• S. Green Building Council
• Greater DFW Recycling Alliance
• State of Texas Alliance for Recycling
• North Texas Recycling Coalition
• Carpet America Recovery Effort

As in 2013, we also supported Fisher House and Habitat for Humanity as part of our community outreach. We provided thousands of pounds of flooring to Habitat for Humanity for re-purposing and were awarded their small Corporate Partner of the Year in 2014, and Fisher House was the primary recipient of our charitable financial contributions during the holidays.

A new initiative in 2014 was our Corporate Floors Giving Fund, where each staff employee was given an allowance of $200 each to be used for any charitable contribution they would like to benefit, empowering them to make a difference either individually or, as some did, to pool together to make a bigger impact.  Our team responded with excitement and many organizations benefited including: Austin Children’s Services, Partners in Hope, CAN Academy, Salvation Army, Ronald McDonald House, Children’s Advocacy Center, Grace Outreach and others.

We were exceedingly proud of our team’s initiative on many charitable fronts and know that many of the hours spent by our team giving to those in need were never even reported.  While our core business is to provide flooring products and services, Corporate Floors feel the larger goal is to provide an environment where we can benefit our respective families, those of our clients and vendors, the community and the world we live in.

Thomas Holland
Chief Solutionist/CEO