Hug Rug dirt-tracking doormats are made with recycled rubber (wipe-clean or launder with a microplastic catcher).
Sustainable flooring is more expensive, but when time comes to replace your carpet or hard flooring, there are some better choices to chemically-treated carpets. From jute and sisal to bamboo or cork flooring, let’s look at the best choices, and what to use for where.
Also read how to clean floors and carpets, naturally.
Reclaimed Wood
Reclaimed wood is one good option, if you like the feel of wood under your feet. If you can’t find reclaimed wood floors, at least look for ones that are FSC-certified, to ensure they don’t come from endangered rainforests.
Bamboo Flooring
Bamboo is the world’s fastest-growing grass. It’s not local (but industrial bamboo is not the same as fresh shoots eaten by pandas). It’s warm and has good acoustic properties, and offers an alternative to choice to wood, which takes far longer to grow. It’s also easy to care for (sweep and mopping with a damp cloth).
Cork Flooring
Cork is very insulating. This is from bark that is stripped from trees in the Mediterranean, so does not require trees to be chopped down. Keeping cork forests alive, helps to preserve native wildlife, so the forests are not felled for other uses. Cork trees live around 200 years, with the cork harvested every 9 years or so. Cork has good acoustic properties too.
Natural Carpet Options: Jute and Sisal
These are the main materials used for carpets. Both are harvested in the Far East where they provide income in poor countries like Bangladesh. Jute is softer and sisal is more textured for heavy footfall and more recommended for stairs (it’s important to get expert advice, as you don’t want ‘slippery carpets’ on stairs).
Econyl (recycled fishing waste)
Econyl is made from ghost fishing waste (old nets recovered from the ocean). Unlike plastic clothing, this is good as you don’t launder carpet tiles, so they won’t leach microplastics from machines into the sea.
