Elastic cork flooring for playgrounds
The play-and-play area at Jayang's nursery in Seoul, South Korea, was one of the first places to receive the new, safe and comfortable eco-friendly cork flooring developed by A-Road - a Korean flooring company - in partnership with BASF Korea and Amorim Cork Composites.
The solution has been specially designed for public recreational spaces - such as playgrounds - and constitutes an ecological alternative to EPDM solutions.
“We use Amorim Cork Composites’ cork products with the certainty that they can provide us with high-quality raw materials.”
The objective was to develop a new flooring solution that could replace EPDM surfaces, minimizing any negative aspects, in particular in terms of environmental impact, overheating, release of odours and risk of injury in the event of falls.
The flooring solution is the result of a joint initiative between three companies and is based on natural cork, with a non-toxic solvent-free binder that ensures grip and durability similar to rubber, but is more environmentally friendly, safe and comfortable.
These characteristics make the flooring solution particularly interesting for use in recreational and leisure spaces for children.
Natural cork flooring offers several advantages compared to conventional rubber surfaces:
• Environmentally sustainable solution, created from ecological materials that are free of heavy metals or hazardous toxic chemicals.
• Does not release odours when exposed to high temperatures and has high durability, since it does not tend to decompose over time.
• Waterproof, thus helping avoid flooding and groundwater seepage.
The solution guarantees good safety conditions: the flooring’s frictional force prevents users from slipping and the product’s elasticity helps protect knees when walking and increases safety by alleviating impacts from falls.
Since it has low thermal conductivity, the solution reduces the phenomenon of creating urban heat islands and enables recreational spaces to be used throughout the year.
It maintains its natural beauty with a natural wood colour.
A-Road chose Amorim Cork Composites as its partner for this project, because of its worldwide reputation and extensive track record, explaining that: "We use Amorim Cork Composites' products because we’re sure that it can consistently provide us with high quality raw materials."