Bids decided by carbon numbers, not color swatches
Project teams may love a bold terrazzo look, yet many procurement portals now filter first on verified carbon data. Without it, a material shifts into a penalty column that inflates embodied-carbon estimates by 10–15 percent (NYSERDA, 2024). That surcharge nudges budget owners toward products already carrying an EPD.
Scoreboard: the raw EPD counts
- Zandur: 16 current EPDs, zero expired
- Johnsonite (Tarkett): 254 current EPDs
- nora by Interface: 363 current EPDs
Those numbers come straight from Building Transparency’s EC3 catalog, updated November 2025. In other words, Johnsonite and nora can satisfy fifteen to twenty times more line items on a typical finish schedule.
Work for Zandur or competing against them?
Follow us for a product-by-product analysis to see which EPDs are costing you specs against Johnsonite and nora.
Coverage gaps cost real specs
All sixteen of Zandur’s declarations sit in the Resilient Flooring category. That leaves stair treads, wall base, and sport surfaces uncovered. Johnsonite fields active EPDs for wall base and accessory profiles, while nora’s database even stretches into seating and lighting SKUs. When architects bundle accessories under one brand to simplify submittals, Zandur’s missing paperwork knocks it out of the running.
Program operator signals
Johnsonite and nora both publish through heavyweight operators like UL and IBU. Zandur relies on Labeling Sustainability Inc.
Time pressure is mounting
Campus master plans inked in Q1 2026 already embed embodied-carbon thresholds patterned on EC3 median values. Flooring without an up-to-date declaration quickly looks like a rotary phone in a 5G rollout. Thier spec life gets shorter each quarter.
Two-month sprint to catch up
The good news: adding or expanding an EPD portfolio no longer demands a year of spreadsheets. With a platform-plus-concierge partner, manufacturers have launched fully verified declarations in as little as eight weeks, even on first-time LCAs (IES, 2025). Fast rollouts plug glaring category gaps and stop last-minute product swaps that erode margin.
Closing play: rubber that meets the road
Johnsonite and nora are winning rubber flooring bids because their catalogs arrive pre-cleared for carbon reporting. Sixteen EPDs show Zandur can play the game, just not across the full court. Doubling or tripling the current count within the next quarter would shield high-margin SKUs, reopen bundled accessory deals, and keep rival logos off hospital plans drafted right now.
