Marmoleum, Forbo's brand of linoleum, is a natural floor made from 97% natural raw materials, 70% of which are rapidly renewable, along with a 43% recycled content. This makes Marmoleum the sustainable flooring choice.
Natural raw materials
The key raw materials used in the linoleum production include linseed oil, which comes from the flax plant seeds, wood flour as production waste from controlled forestry plantations and jute, a crop whose fibres provide the material for the membrane onto which the linoleum is calendared.
What makes Marmoleum flooring special is that it is created entirely from raw materials obtained from their natural habitat right where they grow and renew, often in just 12 months time. Jute and flax are annual crops that can be harvested just like wheat or corn. Extracting rosin is a continuous process, while wood flour, a waste material from the timber industry, is derived from European production forests. Limestone is available in abundance.
CO2 neutral floor covering
Because of its unique properties, its natural ingredients and its modern manufacturing process, Marmoleum is a CO2 neutral product. Find out more about the sustainable character of Marmoleum on our CO2 neutral flooring section.
The craft of manufacturing linoleum has evolved over the last 150 years. Forbo has been driving this development through its Marmoleum brand. Making Marmoleum flooring is an art, which is not learned at any trade - or craft school. In fact, only a handful of people know how to make Marmoleum.
Determining the correct mixture of ingredients, allowing the right time for raw materials to settle, applying the correct temperature & pressure are skills a Marmoleum Experts must master. We are proud of our experts, as they take pride in creating our Marmoleum floors.
Watch the video how Marmoleum is made:
Frederick Walton
Frederick Walton discovered linoleum and patented its manufacturing process in 1863. It is quite remarkable that a product, discovered in the days of gas lights and horse-drawn carriages, is still used in applications for which it was originally designed, such as flooring in health care and educational facilities.
Impressive references
Over 100 years and more, linoleum flooring has found its way in an incredible number of buildings all over the world; the dining hall in the famous Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, the elegant White House in Washington, Buckingham palace in London, the Kremlin in Moscow, the German Reichstag, the Sorbonne University in Paris and even Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam (1938) all featured a linoleum floor covering.
Also today many of the new public buildings world wide are installed with Marmoleum flooring, from the new opera house in Olso or the latest tribal art museum from Jean Nouvelle in Paris. Marmoleum remains a classic floor covering that is loved by architects because of its authenticity, versatility and natural character.
Floor performance in the real world
Topshield2 is a floor finish that we developed specially for our linoleum floor coverings. Topshield2 has been designed as a highly performing finish to create a ‘ready to use’ Marmoleum floor. A floor that requires no initial maintenance or polymer application and is even more resistant to dirt pick-up, less prone to wear and has improved resistance to scratches and stains.
The reality of the day-to-day life of a floor is that it encounters both ‘use and abuse’ without being able to balance its performance with a prescribed cleaning and maintenance regime, as in reality, this is not always carried out exactly on time.
The floor needs to withstand the traces of every day use; the weather of the season, the footprints and dirt carried into the building, the scratches and stains occurring by accident as well as the overall retention of the appearance of the floor over time.
Even where every floor starts out as a new floor just after installation, it will need to keep up is performance over a lifetime of many years. Marmoleum has a proven track record and is also now the modern floor for lasting performance: today, tomorrow, forever.
At Forbo we believe an open, honest and transparent approach to demonstrating a sustainable attitude is the only way to show the credits we attribute to our products and processes. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a recognised methodology we use to determine and measure the impact on the environment of any product during its creation, use and what remains when a product reaches its end of life by measuring a set number of impact categories.
The Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is the outcome of the LCA, which is published in a 3rd party verified report on a particular product. The EPD for Marmoleum verifies our claims and gives transparent insights into our test results and measurements.
Environmental Stewardship
Marmoleum is manufactured in a state-of-the-art environment where the traditional manufacturing process has been automated in efficient production lines that are run entirely on green electricity. At Forbo, we actively steer our processes toward continuous improvement, maximizing the use of recycled content in our Marmoleum and working with green design principles whenever new designs or structures are developed.
Marmoleum installation waste take-back schemes
In many of our markets we have now introduced a network to take make material from previous installations. The cuts and scraps are collected and returned to our factory. On a smaller scale, in our sampling, we take the same approach. This way, we can do our best to assure full-circle recycling even at points where our product reaches its end of life state.
Labels and Certification, recognition that goes a long way
Marmoleum is among the most rewarded and environmentally sound floor covering. We value all our labels, whether it’s the internationally recognised Swan label, the blue Angel certification, the North American Sequoia Seal or more specific labels like Nature Plus or the Austrian environmental label. Next to labels and certification, Marmoleum brings real benefits when measured against BRE or LEED certifications. Here, using a Marmoleum floor helps you in the overall rating of your building.
We have several informative videos about our linoleum floor coverings that can be found on our Linoleum video page.
