The green choice – Composite Decking

For many years, having a green decking area was the last thing you wanted.

After months of classic British summertime, somebody would take a lasting look at your much-neglected wooden decking sitting in the corner of your garden and remark that it looked  ‘a little slimy’. So with a weary sigh, you’d get up from your favourite chair, fend off a child looking for you to head outside and play with them, and instead spend your time giving the deck a wash, restain and repaint.

Only for all your lovingly applied treatments to wash away after the supposed scorching August Bank Holiday actually turns out to involve the tail-end of a tropical hurricane.

Of course, none of this would’ve happened if you had a composite deck. It’s guaranteed not to warp, created with an anti-slip material, and will look back to its very best with just a quick blast with the pressure washer. Not only that, it’s available in a wide range of colours so if you want green just say the word. Or any other colour you can think of.

But anyway, we’re all a little older and wiser nowadays. It’s good to be green in modern society. It’s important to take a step back and think about the environmental impacts of our actions, especially now one of the world’s most influential men probably thinks that climate change is the latest option on the brand new Ford Focus.

Despite being a product containing a considerable amount of plastic, composite decking is actually a highly sustainable, reasonable choice. But how? Well first of all, you don’t need to use any nasty chemicals to treat your decking, it’s ultra low maintenance and can be restored with just a bit of water. A big tick.

Secondly, the materials used to make our composite boards are carefully sourced. Much, if not all, of the wood and plastic would be useless in any other scenario so it’s surely better it finds new purpose in your backyard rather than washing into the sea to end up in some forsaken fish on a new David Attenborough documentary. Another tick.

Now one of the most obvious reasons a composite deck is more environmentally friendly than it’s wooden counterpart is that it’ll last a whole lot longer, usually by about two whole decades (Think back to what you were doing when The Matrix was released in 1999 to gain some perspective on that). Tick. But leaving that aside, it’s easy to think that wood is a natural product and therefore surely more sustainable and sensible than a deck involving any form of plastic. However, as logical as that seems, you may want to reconsider.

Plenty of the wood that is used in creating ‘traditional’ decking is sourced from Asia or South America simply because it’s cheaper there. Not only is deforestation a huge issue – conservationists believe that over a quarter of the Amazon biosphere will be treeless by 2030 if current rates continue – but the carbon footprint of transporting the wood all the way to the UK is really quite significant. There are also concerns that wooden decking boards that are available in Great Britain right now are actually made of illegally-sourced hardwood from some of the world’s most endangered trees. Another swooping tick for composite decking.

So why not call in and put your mind at rest?

At least on one of our green composite decks, there’s no risk of a slip up, neither physically nor ethically.