Whilst I am on blogging “sick leave”, I have invited anyone who fancies it to write a guest blog post. If you’re interested in contributing a self-build, green or cat-related post, please email me! Meantime, many thanks to Miko Coffey for this contribution.

Since we moved into our Brixton house 7 years ago, we have gradually been refitting it to be a more environmentally-conscious home. Having fitted the entire ground floor with sustainable (and rather lovely!) bamboo plank flooring, it’s now time to bid a none-to-soon farewell to the horrible cheap synthetic indoor-outdoor carpets we inherited on the top 2 floors, which have worn through in several places. You know the kind of carpet I mean – the kind that sells for £9.99per sq metre and infects student properties with its depressing – almost squeaky – plastic-ness. In fact, it’s this plastic-y attribute which led young entrepreneur Kelly Atkins to invent a new eco-material made from heat-treated (aka melted) carpet that can be molded into any shape. She actually got the idea when she accientally left her iron on her student accommodation carpeted floor. Check out her products and her cheekily named company Carpet Burns. (No, I don’t own shares in her company, I just think it’s cool!)

But I digress…
In searching for a more sustainable carpet, I popped onto le web for a good old look around, and while there are loads of ‘normal’ carpet shops that have a natural range or two, I am dubious of these. In many cases, only the fibres are natural, not the backing or glue. And they are also often treated with stain repellents that contain long scary names, and they will also probably be laid with some kind of foamy synthetic underlay, too. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find a few places that sell/make 100% natural chemical-free carpets. I’m not interested in scratchy sisal, seagrass or jute, because I want something soft underfoot for the bedroom, and I also reckon those tough fibres might be painful for my kitty’s tender paws. Besides, they tend to look a bit too natural/earthy for the decor of my modern house.

So after browsing a bit, I decided to order some samples from Urbane Living. They have a great selection of wool carpets, including some wool/goat blends. They stock ranges from The Alternative Flooring Co and Crucial Trading, which meant I could order samples of both of these leading sustainable flooring brands in one place. You have to pay £1 per sample (postage included), but this cost is refundable when you order your carpet. They also ask you to send back your samples so they can re-use them, which is cool by me.

Selection & Price
I was concerned that natural carpets would be substantially more expensive than their non-eco counterparts, and while some of the luxury ranges cost up to £51 sq m, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ones we were looking at for the hallway cost around £23-26 sq m. We did like the look of one that cost £34 sq m, but this is not much more (if any) than a similar ‘normal’ carpet that’s part wool, part synthetic. The main downside with 100% natural products is that the colours are more limited than you get with synthetics. The colours are mostly neutral (beiges, taupes, creams & greys), although there are some rather funky coloured stripes if that’s your thing. But I like neutral colours for floors anyway, so I chose a few different textures, fibre contents, weaves & colours, and a couple of days later, my samples arrived. Even the envelopes at Urbane Living are sustainable: their stationery is 75% recycled post-consumer waste & 25% elephant dung! <insert contrived poo joke here>.

Feel-good factor
My hubby and I quickly got our bare feet out and tried stomping & stroking on each sample to see what they felt like. In fact, they all felt great compared to the nasty synthetic stuff. And the best bit was that they didn’t smell like chemicals. We had a hard time deciding which to choose for the hallways, but there was one resounding winner for the bedroom, a carpet that my toes fell in love with, one that felt like little tufts of pillowy poofiness: Wool Pebble. The name says exactly what it looks like, and it’s got a lovely deep pile that’s around twice as thick as the ‘Pecos’ one we chose for the hallways. As for the office, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. I want to find some funky cork but the hubby wants carpet, so we’ll have to wait & see who wins that one.

Wool Pebble

Pecos

Stain Test
Now, any cat-person knows that whatever carpet you choose must be able to withstand the bane of all cat-owners: kitty puke. Those treasures of undigested kitty krunchies & fur that always seem to appear when you are in a hurry to leave, or when you’ve come back from hols. Because my kitty doesn’t barf on demand, I decided to try the Old Jedi Wine Trick and poured some stale red plonk onto the creamy white wool carpet sample to test the stain properties. I reckon if it can handle red wine it can handle the contents of Dierdre’s cat-tummy no probs.

The good news is that the water-resistant properties of wool meant the wine beaded and ‘floated’ on the surface of the carpet for a minute or so before it started to soak in, which meant that I could have probably soaked it up quickly in a real-life spill. The bad news is that I forgot the key to doing a stain test is to actually have the appropriate stain remover in the house. I had no club soda, so tried salt (rubbish), then vinegar (better), then bicarb (even better, esp with vinegar). These all worked to a degree, but there was still a faint greyish blob visible. I whipped out some proper commerical stain remover, and it worked no better than the bicarb. I wonder what would have happened if I had club soda or white wine to pour on.

The results of the test are kind of pointless, as I don’t intend to have red wine anywhere upstairs anyway, and I am sure cat-vom is much less stubborn than red wine. I am also not buying the cream carpet, so I don’t think that grey-ish tint would show on the taupe or grey carpets we are going to get. And the really cool thing I found out AFTER doing the test is that Urbane Living can put a solvent-free water-based stain treatment called Intec on their carpets when you buy them. Voila – even clumsy alcoholics with a penchant for cream can go natural without worry.

Underlay, Underlay!
Urbane Living can recommend an installer, so we may give them a call when we are ready to purchase. In the meantime, I started thinking about underlay. After all, you will buy just as much underlay as carpet, and I couldn’t see anything about eco-underlay on any of the carpet manufacturers’ or suppliers’ websites. A quick Google and I found some recycled carpet underlay called Re-Lay, which is made in the UK from recycled carpet, textiles and truck tyres. Sounds like it’s even more durable than traditional underlays, so I will be sure to ask about using this when we get our carpets fitted.

We’re still some way away (financially) from getting the carpets done, but based on my research, we will definitely be getting natural carpets rather than stinky synthetic ones. Accoridng to Carpet Burns, a synthetic carpet can take up to 250,000 years to biodegrade, so I am happy to shell out for something that I can feel good about walking around on for the next 10.

- Miko Coffey (words and photos)