Eco Friendly Carpets Are A Great Choice

If you need new carpeting in your home, you might want to look into some of the great eco-friendly carpets on the market today.

Better Homes & Gardens produced a nice write-up on some of their editors’ picks of recycled carpet products on the market today and I thought it would be great to share what they had to say.

Recycled carpet is no longer the ugly step-child of the industry. It’s stylish, durable, easy to clean, comparable in price to virgin fiber carpet, and it’s Earth-friendly. Shaw carpets alone will keep over 100 million pounds of old carpets out of the landfill with their Anso nylon carpets.

There are a couple of different major manufacturers that were recently featured in the BH&G article that deserve mention.

Shaw carpets has quite a few recycled carpet products. They have the Anso Nylon 6 line and more recently they are offering the Anything Goes! Green line of carpets.

The Anso nylon carpets contain recycled contents and are recyclable.

The Anything Goes! Green line of carpet products are manufactured with the cradle-to-cradle technology. Cradle-to-cradle means that the carpet material can be endlessly recycled back into the same product, over and over again.

Here is a video showcasing their cradle-to-cradle methodology.

That’s good stuff! Look for these lines:

• Antoinette
• Inspired Spaces
• Endurance II
• Simply The Best
• Timeless Home

Learn more about Shaw’s post-consumer carpet recycling and collection process.

FLOR is another carpet manufacturer that is knee-deep in the business of being a good recycler. FLOR mainly manufactures carpet squares and they have devised a very slick carpet recycling program for its’ customers that wish to participate.

FLOR’s recycling program is dubbed the Return & Recycle Program. The tiles that you return must be FLOR carpet squares, but that’s okay, it’s free of charge. You contact them, they send prepaid UPS labels to you and then they are on their way.

Most of the products that FLOR offers meets or exceeds the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Green Label Plus standards.

In a nutshell, the Institute’s website manifesto states:

• Green Label and Green Label Plus ensure that customers are purchasing among the lowest emitting carpet, adhesive and cushion products on the market.
• CRI designed the Green Label and Green Label Plus programs for architects, builders, specifiers and facility mangers who want assurances that carpet and adhesive products meet the most stringent criteria for low chemical emissions.
• Green Label Plus represents the fourth time the carpet industry has voluntarily enhanced the IAQ standard for its products.

Have you ever heard of Mission Zero? FLOR is a division of Interface, Inc. and they are committed to not having any negative impact on our environment by the year 2020, per the Mission Zero mission statement. You have to appreciate a company taking an initiative like that.

Look for these FLOR products:

• House Pet Series
• Fedora
• Classic Quilt
• Modern Mix

Company C manufactures 100% natural wool rugs for their Natural Grounds line of rugs. Company C…

"…joined Rugmark, a nonprofit organization that campaigns against child labor and poor working conditions in rug factories. A percentage of every Rugmark-certified rug sold goes to educating and rehabilitating children in Nepal, Pakistan, and India."

Look for these collections in their Natural Grounds line:

• Sachi Black Bean
• Wentworth Floral
• Marisol Sand

  BH&G mentioned one other manufacturer called Earth Weave. They have the Bio-Floor collection, which means that their rugs are 100% biodegradable with 100% natural rubber backingand 100% natural wool fibers. There rugs are also non-toxic. Their website states:

"Our products are made using undyed, untreated wool on the face, along with hemp, cotton, jute and natural rubber for the backing materials."

Check into recycled carpet products when you are ready for some new flooring.

top photo via FLOR