The HMTX Industries collaboration with the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and other partners began with sustainable products and practices, led to transparency in product ingredients, and culminated with Just social justice labels companywide and across all brands. The company produces a comprehensive line of high-quality flooring and decorative building surfaces for the home and workplace. With headquarters in Norwalk, CT, two green-certified office buildings in Calhoun, GA, and associated offices in more than 40 countries around the world, HMTX is continuously developing new and innovative products for the marketplace while promoting safe and sustainable processes for doing business.

The HMTX family of brands includes: Halstead in North America, the leading supplier of luxury vinyl tile (LVT) to The Home Depot; Metroflor, its signature residential brand in North America; Teknoflor, its focused healthcare and institutional brand; Aspecta, its high-end global contract brand for architects and designers; and Vertex, the foundation of the international supply chain for HMTX.

While HMTX has a longstanding history of safe and sustainable practices, it is largely thanks to our work with organizations and collaborations like ILFI, the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC), and mindful MATERIALS that the environmental business focus has expanded to include transparency, material health and social justice.

Sustainability/Transparency: Showing the Way to the Flooring Industry

HMTX is leading the charge for transparency in the flooring industry, believing that our customers have the right to know what goes into the products used in their businesses and homes. The HMTX family of companies has issued over 30 Declare labels and over 30 Health Product Declarations (HPD) for more than 50 product lines, many of which can be found at mindfulmaterials.com. Product-specific Type III Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) with external verification are available for all our Aspecta products and for several Teknoflor products. As the first and only hard-surface flooring manufacturer to publish embodied carbon on our Aspecta Declare labels, HMTX clearly demonstrates the company’s continued commitment to sustainability and transparency, as well as serving our customers.

These many sustainability and transparency initiatives are just the tip of the iceberg; Material Health is another priority.

  • All HMTX flooring products are phthalate-free, formaldehyde-free, and free of halogenated and flame retardants. All Aspecta products and many newly formulated Teknoflor products are free of antimicrobial chemicals.
  • HMTX flooring products are rigorously tested for VOC emissions (e.g., FloorScore, Eurofins Indoor Air Gold), product content (e.g., REACH SVHC, phthalates, heavy metals), and other standards related to human health and safety.
  • Samples of all Aspecta and Teknoflor products, as well as samples of the most popular Metroflor products, can also be ordered through materialbank.com.
  • Aspecta and Metroflor samples shipped within the Continental US from our own warehouses are sent out via UPS carbon-neutral shipping.

As HMTX works toward a full carbon-neutral program, the company’s manufacturing partners in Asia are already taking steps to reduce the embodied carbon of its products: 

  • HMTX’s primary factories in China reuse all scraps and trimmings from manufacturing back into the products, which conserves energy because this volume of material does not have to be made from virgin vinyl.  
  • HMTX’s Elegant Home-Tech factory in Zhangjiagang, China uses reclaimed steam from a local steel mill to help heat its presses. The factory also uses separate hot and cold presses to conserve energy, as a greater amount is utilized when the same press must be repeatedly heated and cooled. 
  • Elegant Home-Tech also re-uses non-potable water for production and captured rainwater from a water recycling pool, thereby conserving energy because the water does not need to be treated. New solar panels will be added to the factory roofs in an expansion program. 

HMTX will use the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data gathered company-wide to evaluate all opportunities to reduce the water and energy footprints and embodied carbon of our products and pursue those that are viable. HMTX is currently conducting a Greenhouse Gas Inventory for its global operations. Once completed, we will discover new ways to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and pursue those that are practicable. HMTX is tackling the ambitious goal of carbon neutrality in three main strategies: eliminating emissions, carbon sequestration, and stopping deforestation.

Living Product Challenge: Teknoflor’s Naturescapes HPD

HMTX continued its collaboration with ILFI as it sought the Living Product Challenge (LPC) for its healthcare flooring division’s Teknoflor Naturescapes HPD.

Naturescapes HPD is Teknoflor’s first luxury organic sheet good processed from ecuran, an organically derived polyurethane composite material  processed from plant-based oils such as caster oil and naturally occurring minerals such as chalk. This resilient sheet flooring product has all the advantages of resilient sheet vinyl—durability, easy maintenance, and versatility—but without the vinyl.

Naturescapes HPD became the first chlorine-free hard-surface flooring product in the world to receive LPC Petal certification from ILFI, achieving 16 out of the 20 Imperatives. The LPC certification represents the most rigorous standard for sustainable manufacturing. Not only a product certification program, LPC is an advocacy tool and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability and transparency in product manufacturing today. LPC is comprised of 20 Imperatives spread across seven Petals (performance categories): Place, Water, Energy, Health + Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty. Teknoflor’s Naturescapes HPD received Petal certification because of its completing 16 imperatives within the Place, Health + Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty Petals. Full LPC certification requires meeting established criteria in all 20 Imperatives. The company aspires to achieve LPC 2.0 Imperative Certification for Naturescapes HPD and Nature’s Tile & Plank HPD by the Living Future Conference in April 2021, with plans to achieve Petal Certification by NeoCon 2021.

The Story Behind Teknoflor’s First LPC

Tackling LPC would first require an alternative to PVC-flooring. This made Teknoflor‘s Naturescapes HPD, developed in conjunction with Windmöller GmbH, the natural choice for LPC certification. Teknoflor next secured the aid of WAP Sustainability Consulting, a firm whose employees had extensive experience as LPC assessors and consultants. The companies poured extensive time and resources into LPC with organization, open communication, drive, and determination, allowing them to successfully reach their goal. Through these combined efforts, Teknoflor® Naturescapes HPD™ has become the first resilient flooring product to achieve Petal Certification under the Living Product Challenge.

Our pursuit of Living Product Challenge certification was difficult yet also enlightening and passion–inspiring. Each organization involved was required to participate and work together to achieve a common goal–a task that is truly constructive and illuminating.

Because of the Living Product Challenge, Teknoflor and HMTX achieved new, elevated levels of ingenuity, camaraderie, and creativity. Through ingenuity, we found an alternative to traditional, PVC-based resilient flooring. Through camaraderie, we learned to work together and openly communicate to achieve goals and optimize timelines. Through creativity, we learned that Handprinting—a component of LPC that measures positive impact—is truly an attainable concept and one that can be incorporated into everyday life.

The process taught us how to work together, ask the tough questions, and respectfully push the boundaries that exist within the resilient flooring industry. Together, we brought an industry-disrupting product to market.

Social Justice: Action, Not Lip Service

The formation of HMTX Industries led to a company-wide movement towards social justice— revealing how the people who make our products are treated—with the pursuit of ILFI’s Just social justice label. The Just program gauges a company’s performance in a wide range of metrics, including diversity and inclusion, equity, employee benefits, and stewardship.

HMTX was the first flooring manufacturer in the world to receive Justs Labels, and the first manufacturer in any industry to receive them for factories in China (and all of Asia). HMTX was also the first company to have Just Labels issued in Chinese, as the workers at the factories take great pride in Just and what the program represents. (To learn more about HMTX’s Just efforts in China, and to hear testimonials from several of the workers at the factories, please watch the video available at hmtx.global/sustainability/.)

HMTX was the first manufacturer in the world to receive a label under Just 2.0—the latest version of the Just program. This label, which encompasses HMTX’s entire U.S. operations, allowed us to identify the areas of our company in which we’ve made substantial investments, those that require further refinements, and those in which our existing equitable practices simply need to be crafted into written policies. Far from being the culmination of the company’s sustainability, transparency, and social equity efforts, this ongoing journey will lead to even higher standards.

Written By

Susan Bang

Susan Bang is the Senior Manager, Corporate Communications at HMTX Industries. She is a Marketing Communications professional with a 30+ year PR career where she represented clients in the beauty, travel, lifestyle and residential/commercial building products industries. Prior to joining HMTX, Susan worked with legacy brands such as L’Oréal Paris, Swarovski, Proctor & Gamble, and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Susan holds a Bachelor of Administration degree in English/Communications from Simmons University, Boston, MA.