How Are Carpets a Sustainable Floor Covering for Murfreesboro, TN?

There’s a delicate balance between having a lovely house and caring for our beautiful home, planet Earth. We all want to be delighted with our domicile, but this can often come at the cost of high carbon emissions and waste, including flooring options. Whether deforestation due to unsustainable wood harvesting or pollution from the chemical compounds used to make linoleum, many materials that make up our homes can be deleterious to the overall environment.

Unfortunately, Murfreesboro, TN, is no different; massive landfills, including construction waste, have contaminated the East Fork Stones River with toxic chemicals that must be carefully removed. It’s hard to see the scale of this pollution and not be compelled to take an inventory of your home, trying to determine how to reduce your impact on the delicate Middle Tennessee ecosystem.

Could carpets solve this problem when building or renovating your home? You might be surprised to find out that carpets can be a sustainable way to provide warmth and luxury in your Murfreesboro home, which we’ll explore in this article.

Carpets Can Be Made from Natural and Recycled Materials

Carpet has an unpleasant history of pollution: historically, it has been made from nylon, polyester, or polypropylene, which are made using natural gas and crude oil. This is highly damaging to the environment, which is why construction technology has gone beyond this to find better, kinder options. Designing products to respect the environment is one of the cornerstones of the circular economy, as it’s the start of a sustainable life cycle for the products we use.

Today, you can buy sustainable carpets made from natural materials like wool, organic cotton, hemp, or jute, which require little processing and can be sustainably harvested. There’s also the option to buy carpets made from recycled materials like plastic bottles and packaging; this includes the carpet backing, which is spun from a similar material to reduce waste.

It’s important to talk to your carpet installer about their sustainable options and research the manufacturing process of the carpets you’re interested in. Ask them specifically if they have products such as Resistron, Permalon, and EverStrand in stock: these are the most well-known and widely respected recycled carpet options, but not every installer will have them.

While carpets made from natural materials are not as common, EarthWeave is the leading manufacturer of wool carpets. They do contain latex but are overall quite friendly to the planet, and to your feet.

Biodegradable Carpet Cleaning Allows You to Stay Neat Without Damaging the Environment

Once you have the carpets in place, you’ll also need to worry about how to keep them clean without causing waste or environmental pollution. Traditional steam cleaning often uses harsh chemicals that, when dumped, infiltrate water systems and are dangerous to humans and animals alike. Now, though, you can feel great about your carpets and your carbon footprint by relying on a carpet cleaner that uses hot carbonating extraction, a process that provides a deeper scouring with fewer resources.

Hot water extraction or hot carbonating extraction relies on a biodegradable cleaning solution that will break down and leave no trace, and it uses less water than a steam cleaner. Better still, it can more easily penetrate carpet fibers to pull up all contaminants and harmlessly whisk them away.

A quick search of “carpet cleaning Murfreesboro, TN” demonstrates that hot water extraction is quickly becoming the gold standard of cleaning in the Murfreesboro area, ensuring that you don’t need to worry about damaging the environment while cleaning your floors. When contracting a carpet cleaner, be sure to ask them about the cleaners they use and confirm that they have biodegradable options; you may also ask them about how their machinery reduces water waste and how they dispose of the soiled water afterward.

Great Flooring Doesn’t Need to Compromise Your Sustainable Values

All activism begins at home: we must truly live the values that we stand by and aim to disseminate to the greater public, which means we must put real thought into how we build and decorate our homes. This can be difficult but not impossible as long as you ask good questions, do your research, and aim to find the best possible solutions, even if they aren’t perfect.

If your home is currently clad in carpets, don’t feel the need to throw them away until the end of their lifecycle: holding onto items for as long as possible is also a form of sustainability. When you’re ready to replace them, consider how you might be able to upcycle the materials, whether by transforming them into a cat scratching post or using them to reupholster another item. However you decide to decorate your home, do so with intention and with respect to our planet.