Hardwood Floor Made From Recycled Newspaper

Cool Products: NewspaperWood

It looks like wood, feels like wood, it sands and cuts like wood, but it’s not wood – at least not exactly.  You’ve more than likely heard about construction products that use post-consumer waste in their manufacturing - carpet using plastic resins from PET bottles, insulation using old denim fabrics, or concrete boards strengthened with strands of glass from recycled bottles, now you can say hello to the new “kid” in town – NewspaperWood.   

A couple of creative young design firms from the Netherlands have teamed up to develop a fashionable way to reduce the 41.7 million tons of newsprint that make its way into landfills every year by recycling the perused periodicals into a durable floor covering.

NewspaperWood is essentially compressed discarded newspapers rolled into “logs” then cut into flat planks (in much the same fashion hardwood boards are cut).  The resulting product is surprisingly strong and possesses many of the same properties of the conventional stuff – it even has “grain” like a traditional piece of wood.   "Hardwood" floor that's made from paper that's made from wood…  sort of a new spin on the whole “which came first” quandary.

Don't go racing out to the building supply store just yet.  NewspaperWood is not quite ready for mass production, but do keep your eyes peeled.  In a few years you could very well be standing on flooring made out of the newspaper articles written about the floor you’re standing on...  now if only they could figure out a way to do something with old blogs.

For more information on NewspaperWood check out the Vij5 or Mieke Meijer website.