composite decking materials

I know that we all want to choose green for environmental purposes.

Don't forget, however, that green also means safety - and that most importantly for the vulnerable... as this photograph so wonderfully tells the story.

Pressure Treated and Stained decking materials contain chemicals that can enter the human body through sensitive skin locations... such as the bottom of bare feet.

Composites are much more expensive than even the high quality P.T. woods, but they last more than 5 times longer as well.


When the end of their service is at hand, composites can be recycled again into new material. Correct Building Products provides Jobsite Recycling Bins at various hardware stores so the material can more easily be brought back to the manufacturing plant for its reincarnation process to ensue.

The largest company that manufactures composites is Trex. Most composite materials like that of Trex are the same, with recycled wood content and recycled polyethylene and high density polyethylene (HDPE). Heartland BioComposites, however, uses wheat straw cellulose rather than recycled wood to step up the sustainability competition among manufacturers. Wheat is harvested every year whereas it takes up to 20-30 years to harvest wood. Therefore, wheat is a rapidly renewable resource and a post-agricultral waste product.

It may help you to understand that when taking your plastic grocery bags back to the grocery store, Trex ends up using 7 of the 10 bags harvested from such stores throughout the U.S. each year!

This photograph is courtesy of Correct Building Products.
This information comes from an article I published in May in Green Building Insider, www.greenbuildinginsider and one that will come out this summer in DeckWorld Magazine.
http://www.heartlandbio.com/
http://www.trex.com/
http://www.correctdeck.com/