GreenStep goes large

By Santiago Montero

This has been a very big year for our annual GreenStep Environmental Awards program. In its sixth year, GreenStep has made the leap to Asia in partnership with Domotex Asia/ChinaFloors. That, in turn, led us to explore working with Domotex Germany to hopefully bring the program to Europe in 2016.

Right here at home, this year’s Pinnacle award winner is Shaw Industries — its second Pinnacle Award, third if you count Anderson’s win (and you should). The Pinnacle award recognizes not any single achievement but rather a wide swath of initiatives, accomplishments and corporate commitments that Shaw has made. The only other company to win the Pinnacle award more than once is last year’s winner and this year’s Honorable Mention, Mohawk — a clear reflection of that company’s ongoing and high level commitment to the environment. 

Shaw also won the Honorable Mention in Promotion category for its inspiring program to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital that pulls retailers and consumers into the loop. The Award winner in the Promotion category is Mannington Commercial for its unique “Choices for Good” program which allows schools to “pay what they can” for a wide range of products of its dedicated inventory of product.

J+J Flooring Group won two awards. Taking the top spot for Product, J+J was recognized for a unique product called Kinetex which offers many of the benefits associated with hard surface flooring in a soft surface construction. I’ve never seen anything else quite like it. The company also received an Honorable Mention for its Aquafinity process which it bills as a “complete overhaul of dye house operations” which is an otherwise intensive water usage process. The folks at J&J were so friendly and proud and offered to host tours of the process for those interested. We are, and we’ll be making a special trip down there to take a closer look soon. Of course, we’ll share that with all our readers.

The Process winner this year was Engineered Floors. To say this company has revolutionized the carpet industry is not an exaggeration. It’s now three state of the art manufacturing plants have allowed it to revamp the PET carpet manufacturing process. I’ve personally been to over three dozen factories on four different continents and have never seen anything like it. 

Finally, the Honorable Mention for product was Crossville for its Hydrotect Coating which cleans the air, fight microbes and resists dirt. The product was developed in conjunction with Toto, the world’s leading provider of sanitary ware. Toto, which itself has a factory in Georgia, participated in the award program, much to our delight. 

I am personally so proud of this program for what we have been able to accomplish which is to recognize, to honor and to promote the amazing work and progress our industry has made in the area of environmental sustainability. All the credit goes to the winners.