2/12/2008 - Tiles made from corn touted as durable

Jeff Ayres Reprinted from The Clarion-Ledger (Feb. 12, 2008) — The next big thing in commercial floor tile could emerge from a 61-year-old manufacturing plant on U.S. 80 in south Jackson. The Armstrong floor plant has launched production of “green” commercial floor tiles that unlike most of its competitors does not use fossil fuels in their composition. The Jackson plant was chosen from Armstrong’s 27 facilities in the U.S. to develop and manufacture Migrations BioBased Tile. The tiles will be used by operations such as schools, hospitals and offices, and are available through an Atlanta-based distributor. “School systems with budgets, if they’re looking to put in new floor tile, can stay (within) their budgets” with Migrations, says Terry Bates, a mixer operator at the Jackson plant. Company officials say products such as Migrations represent a growing trend in business to use environmentally friendly materials and products. “We’re on the wave here,” said Paul Welch, the Jackson plant’s manager. “You see the wave coming and either you get on it or you miss it.” Citing proprietary measures, Armstrong won’t go too deeply into how the product was developed, or how much of it is produced daily at the Jackson plant. The tile company’s scientific team spent about two years coming up with the right formula for a tile that is not only Earth-friendly but more durable than standard commercial floor tiles, which typically use petroleum-based polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, as a binding agent. The company developed a corn-derived polymer Armstrong named BioStride. The plant combines it with limestone as the essential components of the new tiles. The tiles also feature 10 percent pre-consumer recycled material. Armstrong officials say 20,000 square feet of the tiles save an amount of energy equivalent to 72 gallons of petroleum. They are also five times more impact-resistant than standard tiles and 2.5 times more crack-resistant than its predecessor, the company touts. Robert Lochhead, director of the University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Polymers and High-Performance Materials, says companies across the business spectrum are looking to incorporate eco-friendly elements into their products and ways of doing business. The challenge, he said, is doing that while keeping costs relatively low. Materials have been made from fossil fuels for so long that economies of scale have developed around those products over time, meaning they’ve generally become more affordable, Lochhead said. But corporate investment in bio-based resources is still fairly new, he continued, and those economies of scale haven't yet taken shape. “It could take 25 years,” said Lochhead, who added he isn’t familiar with Migrations tiles. As a result, he said, companies will bear some heavy costs and the products may be expensive, at least short-term. But the effort will be worth it, he said, because it will help those companies face less scrutiny over environmental standards should the government increase regulations. Armstrong officials say Migrations costs about 30 percent more than its vinyl-based tiles but they add that costs were kept down by using the Jackson plant, which already had the capability to make the tiles and needed only slight equipment modification. Otherwise, the company said it might have needed to build a new plant and buy new equipment before it could begin production. Even so, some employees said producing the tiles was a new but exciting challenge for them. Bates likened the process to being back in high-school chemistry class. Terri Garling, who inspects the tiles as they come off the production line, said the effort was “a learning curve” and involved “a lot of thinking outside the box” for her and her colleagues. “It was through trial and error that we learned how (to make the tiles),” she said. “Everybody gave 150 percent.” Armstrong has five pending patents on the technology used to make the tiles. PHOTO (Joe Ellis/The Clarion-Ledger): Inspector John Archie (right) uses a suction cup to remove a flawed Migrations floor tile from a conveyor as he and lead inspector Nellie Atkins scan the newly manufactured squares for imperfections at the Armstrong World Industries plant on U.S. 80 in Jackson on Thursday. Migrations is a bio-friendly commercial floor tile that uses a corn-based polymer in its construction.

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