insideSUSSEX Magazine Issue 17 - July 2016 | Page 96

INTERIORS

COUNTY GROUND CARPETS:
TED TODD HARDWOOD FLOORING
You care about the environment and so do Ted Todd, which is why they’ve always believed it’s
their responsibility to know exactly where their timber comes from. If suppliers can’t prove its
origin, or that it’s been sourced in accordance with Ted Todd’s strict environmental and ethical
policy, they won’t deal with them. And they don’t take this position because it’s fashionable,
either; since they were founded, the company has had a conscience about what they do and a
clear environmental policy has been in place since the 1990s.

GETTING THE STAMP OF APPROVAL
Just because wood is a natural product doesn’t mean its environmental
credentials can be taken for granted. When choosing wood for your
home, it’s really important to know where it comes from and that it has
been grown and harvested in a responsible way that doesn’t undermine
the surrounding natural habitat.

So how do we do this? Fortunately, the Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC) has a system in place to ensure that when companies and
consumers see their logo stamped on a piece of wood, or a product is
FSC certified, they can rest assured that they are buying something that
is not contributing to environmental damage. There are a number of other
forest certification schemes around, but they do not have the same strict
environmental, social and economic standards, or such a rigorous chain
of custody as the FSC.

When Ted Todd started, they were mostly dealing with reclaimed wood,
taken from Victorian factories and warehouses. From an environmental
perspective, this is perhaps the best way of prolonging the life cycle of
any tree. Here’s the science: wood is a unique and renewable material;
trees absorb carbon during their growing cycle, and this carbon remains
stored in products like wood flooring during its service life, thus keeping it
out of the atmosphere. At the end of its service life, wood can be reused
(in which case the carbon continues to be stored in the wood) and finally,
sometimes hundreds of years later, used for fuel.

Ted Todd takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously, so much
so that they are now the leading provider of FSC-certified hardwood
flooring in Europe. It’s important to them that they know orangutans
aren’t losing their natural habitats because of wood floors with their name
on them, or that centuries-old trees aren’t being cut down just because
their wood is this year’s latest trend. Ted Todd have done all the hard
work so that you can buy a new hardwood floor with a clear conscience,
and they work alongside handpicked retail professionals who share the
same passion, ethos and values ensuring the integrity of their product is
retained at all times.

Demand has meant however, that there is not enough antique and
reclaim ed wood to go around, and as wood floors have become more
popular, there has been a corresponding increase in the amount of new
wood that has to be sourced from forests around the world.

Visit County Ground Carpets & Flooring, Hove, or
www.tedtodd.co.uk/about-ted-todd/find-a-retailer/
to find a retailer near you.

Again, this wouldn’t be a problem if there was an endless supply of new
wood, but unfortunately there isn’t. In fact, the statistics paint a grim
picture. More than 80 percent of the earth’s natural forests have already
been destroyed. Up to 90 percent of West Africa’s coastal rainforests have
disappeared since 1900, and Brazil and Indonesia, which contain the world’s
two largest surviving regions of rainforest, are being stripped at an alarming
rate by logging, fires, and land clearing for agriculture and cattle grazing.

County Ground Carpets & Flooring
The Chalet
Sussex County Cricket Ground
Eaton Road
Hove
East Sussex
BN3 3AN

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be buying any wood at all, but it
does mean we need to ensure that the wood we do buy isn’t robbing
insects and animals of their habitats, and that natural resources aren’t
being stripped from the environment for short-term gain.

01273 738907

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