Richlite Offers Three Series of Sustainable Surfacing

Richlite has been producing sustainable countertop materials since 1943, the newest of which is embedded with bamboo and called Stratum. Stratum is a naturally designed material inspired by the banded cliffs of Palouse Canyon in Eastern Washington.

In addition to Stratum, Richlite offers the Northwest series and Cascade series of surfacing, all of which are made from natural fibers sourced from virgin wood, post-consumer waste, recycled blue jeans, burlap bags, banana peels and more. The fibers are combined into pulp and made into sheets of paper. The paper is then saturated with color and Richlite’s EcoBind resin formula with no added urea formaldehyde (NAUF). This formula has one of the lowest VOC levels of any phenolic resin. Finally, several layers of this resin-saturated paper goes through 75 hot-press cycles to form hard slabs in sizes of 4 ft. by 8 ft. and 5 ft. by 12 ft. from 0.25 in. to 3 in. in thickness.

Richlite uses a sustainable process in creating its surfacing materials known as Waste-to-Energy (WE) Technology, which is a closed-loop system that reduces natural-gas usage by 83 percent and overall carbon footprint by 32 percent. The final product has a natural feel and can be used for countertops, cabinet doors, wall cladding, windowsills, partition doors and stair treads.