The laminate flooring has been banned by consumers in many countries and gradually won't buy it.

According to the news, after South Korea imposed a ban on the use of laminate flooring in the country in 2004, many European countries are also planning to strictly control the quality and sales of laminate flooring. So, what about the laminate flooring? Why is it banned?

Mr. Tian, ​​who has been working as a Japanese and Korean flooring agent for a number of years, told reporters that Koreans are afraid of the slow release of formaldehyde that has to be used in laminate flooring, because before this, laminate flooring dominated the domestic market and was therefore consumed in general. Among the news about the wooden floor that the Koreans were able to obtain, the Koreans’ intention to ban the sale was intentionally or inadvertently “ignored”.

As for how to be banned, he believes that the answer has two aspects: First, because the laminate flooring is to combine the fibrous wood with the glue to make the sheet, in order to ensure the hardness and wear resistance of the floor, it is necessary to use super glue. The rubber contains a lot of formaldehyde harmful to the human body; the second is because the Korean floor heating is prevalent, and the laminate floor is exposed to high temperature for a long time, and the internal formaldehyde emission will increase and the duration will be longer, even up to 15-20. year.

In May 2004, South Korea implemented higher technical standards, prohibiting MDF, plywood, and laminate flooring from entering home renovations, as these panels were the main cause of indoor air pollution. Instead, it is a type of flooring that is greatly reduced in the amount of glue, such as parquet. Or pure solid wood flooring.

â—†The laminate floor has an insurmountable bruise

In China, the sales of laminate flooring are very large, and the Chinese have the habit of protecting large enterprises. Although the product is indeed harmful to consumers, many people will not take compulsory measures to eliminate these backward products. Consumers have information asymmetry when purchasing products, which is a vulnerable group. Therefore, understanding the defects of the product is particularly important for consumers.

In recent years, the problem of strengthening the floor has been frequently raised in the inspection of many administrative departments. For example, the Guizhou Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce announced the quality inspection of the impregnated paper laminated wood flooring (reinforced wood flooring) in the circulation area in 2012. Of the 51 batches of randomly selected samples tested, nearly half of the batches were unqualified. According to reports, the main unqualified items tested were formaldehyde emission, static bending strength, surface wear resistance, density, and water absorption thickness expansion rate. The quality supervision department of Hunan Province also detected a number of unqualified flooring brands in 2012. During the period of 315 in 2013, a well-known laminate flooring brand was also included in the “China Quality Miles Banking Complaint Acceptance Model” for quality problems.

Laminate flooring has always occupied a large market share in the flooring market. One of the most important factors is its absolute price advantage. However, with the increasing environmental awareness of consumers, more and more consumers have begun to put more and more strict requirements on the environmental protection of laminate flooring, and the price is not the only standard that affects its purchasing factors. Under this trend, products with high environmental standards and better quality are more likely to be favored by consumers. Nowadays, solid wood flooring is leading the consumer's purchasing psychology with its high comfort, green and harmless, sound insulation and warmth, which has become an inestimable market dark horse.

Solid wood flooring is a high-end durable consumer goods in China. With the continuous improvement of consumers' quality of life requirements, consumption concept, consumption awareness and actual consumption power, the “original ecology” characteristics of solid wood flooring have been favored by middle and high income consumers. Become an important choice for people's floor decoration. However, solid wood flooring is the most affected wood flooring category, and its raw materials are mostly large-diameter broad-leaved trees with a growth period of several decades or even hundreds of years. Due to the growing scarcity of timber resources and the call for protection of tropical rainforests by international environmental protection organizations, the prices of solid wood flooring products in China have continued to rise in accordance with raw materials, and the production volume has fallen sharply. The production and sales volume in the past five years has been stable between 42 million and 45 million m2. The proportion of the industry has also shrunk from 40% a decade ago to 10.7%, becoming a high-end wood flooring consumer goods.

â—† Strengthen the floor without aldehyde, who should insult the IQ?

Whether it is fortified or solid wood flooring, it has its irreplaceable advantages and is indispensable for consumers. So, why has the output of laminate flooring been gradually reduced in recent years? According to the reporter's investigation, this is closely related to the orientation of the consumer market. From a certain perspective, the laminate flooring has been using new styles to make up for the defects of its materials and environmental problems, but the frequency of new design and production, the decreasing profits and The “betrayal” of some consumers ultimately limited its development. Merchants are not reluctant to continue to mass produce laminate flooring, but the profit margins that they can bring in the future are not clear enough, and the consumption of solid wood flooring is becoming more and more fierce. Therefore, under multiple reasons, the reinforcement of floor production is reluctantly "reduced."

Will laminate flooring be withdrawn from the market? After the rivers and lakes will only leave the legend of composite wood flooring? It is understood that because of the trend of environmental protection, solid wood flooring will gradually replace composite flooring. Reinforced laminate flooring is now a wood flooring that the country allows to produce, sell and be used by consumers. The laminate flooring contains formaldehyde, and the decoration pollution mainly comes from formaldehyde glue. From the perspective of environmental protection, all products with artificial formaldehyde addition should be gradually withdrawn from the market, and products that are not released with formaldehyde or added with formaldehyde (negative ion floor, solid wood floor) ) Replace, this is a big trend, no one can stop it.

When the reporter visited the building materials market and asked some floor brand sales staff, whether there is a "formaldehyde-free" laminate floor for sale, the answer is basically the same: "As long as it is a laminate floor, it must contain glue, there is formaldehyde in the glue. Want no Formaldehyde can only choose pure solid wood flooring.” Even the seller’s words are quite sharp. “There is no formaldehyde on the floor? It’s impossible. Some people want to make everyone afraid of formaldehyde. Let’s speculate on gold!”

The insiders pointed out that the aldehyde-free floor is the direction of everyone's efforts. However, under the current conditions, the technical index of the density and water swelling rate of the composite floor requires the participation of formaldehyde to maintain balance. The use of floor products without aldehyde adhesives is more costly, and its price also means great pressure on consumers. Secondly, after leaving formaldehyde, the comprehensive performance of the floor is difficult to stabilize, and may not meet the national comprehensive standards for wood-based panels.

The floor, wardrobe, plywood, paint and ceramic tile used by many people in the decoration are all produced by famous brands or large enterprises. The quality of the products conforms to the national standards. Some products even obtain the green environmental protection certificate and the national quality exemption certificate, but why the renovated home The air quality is still not up to standard, often exceeds the standard several times, dozens of times. You send these products to the test, most of them are qualified, but why can't the air quality be qualified? The reasons are: the country has no commitment when formulating product standards, adopting the standard The products produced can make the air quality qualified.

It only means that the products that meet the standards are less harmful than the products that do not meet the standards. The products that meet the standards do not guarantee that the harmful substances they emit will not cause illness and will not exceed the standard. Reinforced laminate flooring has the disadvantage of releasing formaldehyde and polluting the air, and it will not be harmless because it is qualified. The reinforced floor is like a "dichlorvos" as an insecticide, and it will be eliminated as people know it.

â—† Strengthen the floor, consumers gradually do not buy

According to major media reports in the country, there are 25 major harmful substances causing air pollution in home decoration, and there are four major sources of pollution (1 plywood 2 composite wood flooring, 3 panel furniture 4 coatings). Experts call on the owners to use the above materials as little as possible. The air pollution in China is quite serious. 90% of the new homes are not up to standard air quality, 30% of the newly renovated households are seriously exceeding the standard, and the highest is 120 times higher. Currently, 60% of the diseases are caused by air pollution, and 90% of the diseases are caused by air pollution. The child’s home has just been renovated, and it’s not hard to imagine how regretful and painful the parents have lost their lives because of their home decoration. Most of our families are only children, it is a darling, it is the responsibility of parents to create a healthy environment for them. If we continue to default the pollution of home decoration, we can not explain to children.

In response to the problem of strengthening the floor, a senior person who has been engaged in the flooring industry for many years has expressed his point of view. He will not study whether to ban the sale of laminate flooring in foreign countries, and also put everyone on the side. It can be seen that the reason for the ban is actually the most sensitive and difficult problem to solve for the strengthening of the floor. It is "how to control the formaldehyde content". The unstable formaldehyde content in the domestic laminate floor is a difficult problem.

The use of formaldehyde in the manufacture of laminate flooring is indeed unavoidable. In the minds of domestic consumers, laminate flooring has always been the cheapest product in the floor. In recent years, large-brand laminate flooring has put its environmental protection promotion in the first place, and the goal of brand innovation is to achieve lower and lower formaldehyde content. The requirements for formaldehyde emission from laminate flooring in the national standard are also gradually improved.

“Strengthen the floor is the cheapest wood floor”, which has already imprinted the mark on the minds of consumers. However, the innovation of laminate flooring tells people that it is not the floor that can't be used on the countertop a few years ago, but the floor texture is closely related to the feeling of solid wood. Therefore, the price of some high-quality laminate flooring is higher than that of low-end wood composite. floor. At the other extreme, however, the laminate flooring industry has low barriers, and the laminate flooring that is not environmentally friendly, has low quality, and has excessive formaldehyde content is still flooding the market, and the frequent price wars have caused the laminate flooring to encounter the embarrassment of “not cheap to buy”.

Non-pure solid wood material requires a large amount of super glue as a binder. Due to the particularity of raw materials and manufacturing processes, it has been difficult to strengthen the floor from "formaldehyde". In addition, formaldehyde release does cause direct or indirect damage to the human body. Today, when the health factor is becoming more and more strict, this will undoubtedly become a major obstacle to the long-term development of the laminate floor.

In this regard, Shi Feng, secretary general of the China National Forest Products Industry Association, said that the national environmental standards for flooring are not low, and some data are almost in sync with European standards, but domestic flooring is far less environmentally friendly than foreign countries, and there is a long way to go. The original floor has unlimited potential, but if it can't solve the environmental problems, it will gradually become a chicken in the consumer market, and it will become more and more difficult.