Carbon Calculator

For flooring manufacturers & suppliers

The carbon footprint of your floor, per m², ready for any specifier.

Architects, contractors and public procurers increasingly ask for product-level embodied carbon before they specify. The big brands answer with EPDs costing thousands per product line. You can answer today with a cradle-to-gate PCF aligned with ISO 14067 — free, traceable, and printable as a PDF.

Calculate my flooring PCFSee a finished report

Free. No account needed to produce and print the report.

Start from a ready recipe

These pre-fill the calculator with a typical bill of materials per m², using traceable DEFRA factors. Load one, then replace every number with your own — the factor register in your report updates automatically.

SPC / LVT rigid core vinyl (5 mm)

Limestone + PVC core with a PVC wear layer. Typical of click-lock rigid vinyl planks; edit thickness and recycled content to match your line.

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Laminate flooring (8 mm, HDF core)

High-density fibreboard core with melamine overlay and balancing layer. Heat for pressing is usually the biggest process lever.

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Engineered wood (14 mm oak top)

Oak wear layer on a softwood/ply core with adhesive. Kiln drying is the hotspot; biogenic carbon handling matters for comparability.

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Carbon data by floor type

Typical cradle-to-gate ranges, the hotspots that drive them, and the data you need to gather — one page per floor type.

LVT (luxury vinyl tile)

6 – 14 kg CO₂e/m²

Read the breakdown

SPC / rigid core vinyl

8 – 16 kg CO₂e/m²

Read the breakdown

Laminate flooring

5 – 10 kg CO₂e/m²

Read the breakdown

Engineered wood flooring

4 – 12 kg CO₂e/m²

Read the breakdown

Linoleum

2 – 6 kg CO₂e/m²

Read the breakdown

Carpet tiles

6 – 14 kg CO₂e/m²

Read the breakdown

Why flooring, why now

Whole-life carbon rules

Building regulations and rating schemes (BREEAM, LEED, DGNB, and national whole-life carbon limits) require product-level GWP data. Floors are a top-five embodied-carbon line in most buildings.

EPDs became table stakes

Tarkett, Forbo, Gerflor, Interface and Karndean publish verified EPDs. Specifiers now expect carbon data from every manufacturer on the tender list — including independents and SMEs.

CPR revision coming

The revised EU Construction Products Regulation (2024/3110) phases in mandatory environmental declarations, with GWP first. Preparing PCF data now is the cheapest way to be ready.

Typical embodied carbon of floor types (A1–A3)

Indicative cradle-to-gate ranges compiled from public EN 15804 EPDs (IBU, EPD International, MRPI, SCS). Use them to sense-check your own result — not as a substitute for it.

Floor typeA1–A3 GWPWhat drives it
SPC / rigid core vinyl (4–6 mm)8 – 16 kg CO₂e/m²Limestone + PVC core; energy-intensive polymerisation.
LVT (heterogeneous, 2–3 mm)6 – 14 kg CO₂e/m²PVC, plasticisers, wear layer; varies with recycled content.
Sheet vinyl / heterogeneous resilient5 – 12 kg CO₂e/m²Forbo/Gerflor EPDs cluster here; bio-plasticiser lines sit lower.
Linoleum2 – 6 kg CO₂e/m²Bio-based (linseed, cork, wood flour); often carbon-storing in A1.
Laminate (HDF core, AC3–AC5)5 – 10 kg CO₂e/m²HDF board dominates; melamine overlay adds ~1–2 kg.
Engineered wood (oak top, 14 mm)4 – 12 kg CO₂e/m²Highly dependent on veneer thickness, glue, and biogenic accounting.
Solid hardwood3 – 10 kg CO₂e/m²Drying energy is the hotspot; long service life changes per-year picture.
Carpet tiles (bitumen/PVC backed)6 – 14 kg CO₂e/m²Nylon face fibre is the hotspot; recycled-yarn lines ~30–50% lower.
Ceramic / porcelain tile10 – 20 kg CO₂e/m²Kiln firing dominates; thin-body and large-format differ widely.

Ranges span multiple manufacturers, thicknesses and recycled-content levels. Biogenic carbon in wood products is reported per EN 16485 and can shift totals significantly.

How the calculation works

  1. 1. Describe the product

    Declared unit (1 m² at a stated thickness), reference year, production country — the grid electricity factor is applied automatically.

  2. 2. Build the recipe per m²

    Pick materials from a traceable factor library (PVC, plasticiser, limestone, HDF, oak veneer, adhesives, nylon yarn…) and enter the kg per m² from your BOM. Add inbound transport by mode and distance.

  3. 3. Add production energy

    Your site's annual electricity, gas and fuel split across annual output. Yield losses scale material inputs automatically.

  4. 4. Packaging and report

    Pallets, film and cardboard per m², then export a print-ready PDF with a full factor register: every value, unit, dataset and source your specifier can audit.

Start now — about 30 minutes

Flooring PCF questions

Is a product carbon footprint the same as an EPD?
No. An EPD (EN 15804) reports a full set of environmental indicators across life-cycle modules A1–D and requires programme-operator verification. A product carbon footprint reports only climate impact (kg CO₂e) and, under ISO 14067, can be self-declared. A cradle-to-gate PCF is the right first step — many buyers accept it, and it is the bulk of the work inside an EPD's A1–A3 GWP figure.
What declared unit should I use for flooring?
The industry convention is 1 m² of installed product, stated with thickness or grammage (e.g. '1 m² of 2.5 mm heterogeneous sheet'). EN 15804 product category rules (c-PCR for resilient, textile and laminate floor coverings, EN 16810) also use 1 m². State the exact build-up alongside the figure.
Which materials drive the footprint of resilient flooring?
PVC resin, plasticisers, limestone filler and the wear-layer finish dominate LVT and SPC, together with process electricity and drying. For wood floors, kiln drying and adhesives dominate. Recycled content and renewable electricity are the two biggest levers in published EPDs.
Can I answer an architect's or contractor's carbon request with this?
Yes — that is the most common trigger. Whole-building carbon assessments (LEED, BREEAM, DGNB, national building regulations) ask manufacturers for product-level GWP. A clearly stated cradle-to-gate PCF per m² with a factor register gives specifiers what they need to plug into their model.
How accurate does my data need to be?
Use your real bill of materials per m² and your site's annual energy split by output. Where a value is uncertain, note it — the report includes a data-quality rating so reviewers can see exactly where measured data ends and database averages begin.

The next tender will ask for this number.

Build it once, reuse the factor register for every product line, and answer the next specification questionnaire the same day.

Build my flooring PCFCustomer asked for a PCF?