When the commercial division of the world’s largest flooring manufacturer switches its focus from “footprinting” to “handprinting” — or leaving the world in better shape than when we found it — it is not a small endeavor or one taken lightly.
We at Mohawk Group quickly realized that if we truly intended to pursue sustainability, it would require a sea change in our way of doing business, our manufacturing processes, our attitude from plant floor to boardroom, and our products. It would require committed leadership and putting to work all the innovation we had come to be so well known for. And it would mean every day, in every Mohawk facility around the globe, reinvigorating our promise to Believe in Better.
Mohawk Group’s search for an original, all-encompassing sustainability strategy began when we decided to pursue the Living Building Challenge. That decision had a huge impact on our plans to restore a mid-century modern building in Dalton, Georgia, that had been previously used as a showroom for our residential products. It became the Light Lab Design Center and the first Living Building Challenge Petal certified project in the state of Georgia and the first Petal certified restoration project in the entire southeastern United States.
We turned an old showroom into a Living Building and, in the end, an inspiration. Going through the certification process for the Light Lab opened our minds to a world of paths for sustainability, and it only made sense for us to start applying the same criteria to the way we make our products. We began talking: How could we produce flooring that met the Living Product Challenge?
The pioneer for what has become a growing portfolio of net-positive products is our award-winning and successful Lichen collection, the first flooring product in the world to achieve Living Product Challenge Petal certification. Designed in collaboration with LPC founder Jason McLennan and presented at NeoCon 2017, the Lichen collection is inspired by the idea of “Nature’s Carpet” and the multihued, multitextured world of lichens. Just as lichens play a regenerative role in their natural ecosystem, the Lichen collection gives more resources back to the environment than it uses during its entire life cycle. It merges leading concepts in biophilic design and sustainability in ways that have never been done before in flooring.
In 2018, Mohawk Group followed Lichen with five carbon-neutral products for contract interiors, including Nutopia, a carpet plank system that employs a new heathered yarn and the notion of “urban fabric;” Nutopia Matrix, a carpet plank manufactured using next-generation dematerialized carpet tile backing technology; Sunweave broadloom and Sunweave area rugs, both inspired by women weavers of indigenous cultures around the world; and Pivot Point ERT, an enhanced resilient, Red List-free, PVC-free tile. Each of these products has been designed to achieve the stringent requirements for Living Product Challenge Petal certification.
In our Living Product Challenge journey, Mohawk focuses on all seven Petals: Water, Energy, Equity, Health & Happiness, Materials, Place, and Beauty. But here’s the real challenge of the Living Product Challenge: It requires that these Living Products give back more than they take. So we cannot look at just one element of sustainability, such as recycling. We have to look at all the ways our products are leaving an impression on our planet.
Pursuing a strategy of handprinting has prompted us to take a hard look at the materials that go into our products and how our manufacturing processes and facilities use water and energy. It has encouraged us to study the gifts of nature when designing our products, to respect the natural world and emulate objects in it. It has broadened our view of the world, taking us out of the manufacturing facility and into the community to establish partnerships with social and environmental entities. It has focused us on wellness—the wellness of the families who use our products, the wellness of the employees who make our products, and the wellness of the communities where our products are made.
One thing we have discovered at Mohawk is that handprints come in different shapes.
They can be small—solar energy savings for a housing development occupying a portion of a block on the southside of Chicago; or they can be large, like water conservation efforts impacting an entire college campus. We are offsetting the amount of water used in the manufacturing of our Living Products by working together with colleges to retrofit showers: the partnership with Morehouse College in Atlanta to install low-flow showerheads is saving more water than is used to create our Lichen collection, while a similar plan to retrofit select dormitories at Hampton University in Virginia with low-flow water fixtures will create another environmental handprint in the case of our new Living Products, Nutopia and Nutopia Matrix.
Our handprints can impact more than we can imagine. For example, Mohawk is partnering with Groundswell to install 10 smartflower solar technology energy systems to produce clean, renewable energy in schools with STEM programs and low-income communities. The smartflower initiative will produce and share more energy than is used to create our new Living Products, including Sunweave and Pivot Point ERT, while offering substantial energy savings to the families in these areas.
Our holistic approach to sustainability has evolved into so much more than just making sure that we recycle old carpeting or that our products are free of toxins. We are touching lives and changing the way we do business in the process.
We’re working toward a kind of symbiosis between customer and company. Our customer is the company, and our customers’ expectations and knowledge when it comes to sustainability are higher than ever. So, it is integral that we become a part of—and even surpass—their vision for sustainability.
The strenuous standards for Petal certification have set us upon innovative, thoughtful and immensely satisfying paths. Some paths have led to the development of new technologies and products such as the heathered yarn used in Nutopia, Heathered Hues, which reduces energy use and dye waste by using a new process that enables three colors of nylon yarn to be extruded in a single filament rather than being dyed individually and then air-entangled.
Other paths have inspired us to develop new relationships with organizations such as the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, The Trust for Public Lands, and the National Wildlife Federation.
All of this is because we set out on this quest for sustainability and dedicated our company and its resources to a positive handprint.
We lead the flooring industry in sustainability because we wake up every day seeking to enrich our connection to the natural world, the world we are trying to protect, through beautiful design and a sustainable legacy. We look for the next innovation in materials, the next solution in manufacturing, and the next new social and environmental partnership we can nurture as we work to move into an era of true circular economy.
We at Mohawk believe in positive handprints. We know we can make better products for a better world. We have proven that it is possible, and we are committed to creating a healthier, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative future.
We all have so much more to do and to learn when it comes to sustainability. But our commitment and promise to Believe in Better keeps us at Mohawk pushing forward. Believe in Better—such a wonderful fit for our handprint—is driving us to be better.
Click here to learn more about Mohawk’s corporate commitment to sustainability.
