The hunt for affordable, environmentally friendly carpet
I decided it was time to change the carpet in the bedrooms. The previous owner had dogs and after trying to remove the odor of the dogs, I still had no luck. So, I started a quick hunt for environmentally friendly carpet. I wanted a low VOC carpet, one that would emit less chemicals. Wool was the preferred type (wool doesn’t emit as many VOCs into the environment, is biodegradable, and filters though nitrous oxide).
My first stop was Eco Design Resources in San Carlos, a showcase of environmentally friendly home products and green building. I found a big selection of wool carpets. But everything was too pricey. If I had made it big in a dot com, this place would definitely have furnished and decorated my entire home. The cheapest I found was $45-50/yard of wool carpet medium grade, uninstalled. This was too expensive for me.
Then I decided to go into a normal carpet store, called California Carpets in San Carlos. I walked in, and they had a ton of carpets to choose from. The sales agent was friendly and when I asked her for low VOC carpets, she quickly directed me to wool and gave me a lot of information on wool and its benefits, including a takeaway card. On sale, I found remnants of wool carpet for $40-$50/yard installed, a much better deal than Eco Design.
Finally, I walked into Home Depot just to check them out. They also had a ton of carpets, but when I went to their carpet specialist to ask for low VOC carpets, he had no idea of what I was talking about. He said he had stainmaster carpets, but didn’t understand what low VOCs were. That was too bad, because Home Depot had the cheapest selection of around $30/yard installed, but I had no clue to which ones were environmentally friendly. Talk about customer service!
I think I’ll probably go for California Carpets…it’s just too bad that the ecofriendly focused stores are so pricey, otherwise I would definitely support them.
10 comments
Hi, I maybe of help. I am also a carpet specialist at homedepot. The reason we don’t know about the Low VOC rated carpet is because this term is something new to the market. Think back, how old is this word or concept, it’s no different than looking for a no BPA on waterbottles. However, you should be looking for either a Beaulieu brand, more specifically “puresque carpet” or carpet made from 100% recycled matterials. We don’t have many but we do have them. All usually less than 30 dollars a square yard.
Wool is definately not your only option. Though wool has many wonderful eco-benefits, being rapidly renewable for instance, the price usually puts it out of most people’s price ranges. I have two recommendations for you.
One option you might want to consider if you are trying to be environmentally friendly is residential carpet tile. I know it sounds weird, but there is usually a ton of waste when installing traditional roll carpeting. Carpet tile reduces the waste drastically. Check out Simply Green (www.simplygreencarpet.com), I’m pretty sure all of their residential carpet tiles are low-VOC.
The other recommendation is that if you have your heart set on wool there is a manufacturer called Woolshire (www.woolshire.com). I work for a carpet store and our cost for their cheapest 100% wool product is in the mid teens… Of course you need to figure pad, installation, and mark up, but you do have less expensive wool options.
If you want true environmentally friendly carpet this is the best site to check out. VOC stands for volitile organic compounds and is not a new term to the industry. Natures carpet has been around since 1992 and wool has been the natural choice for carpet for thousands of years.
On TD’s recommendation, I went to Woolshire’s website but found all prices around $69 SF
Re Jeremy’s puresque carpet: are the odor-eating chemicals safe for sensitive people? Isn’t the idea to get away from chemicals?
Puresque carpet uses organic salts in the backing to accomplish its little miracle. I tell you – it is something else. We have found that it totally takes care of bad odors – they are a thing of the past. In addition (we have this in our toddlers’ playroom) it is amazingly stain resistant – and I even had to clean marker out of it, using their instructions it came right out. LOVE puresque.
Hi,
I am also looking for low VOC carpet. Wool is not an option for me because I don’t think I can maintain it…and I worry about moth in the carpet. Please let me know which carpet you with. Thanks.
Is Puresque truly a low-VOC emitter, or does it’s odor eating technology simply remove the smell of the VOC? Also, our sense of smell often alerts us to problems which we cannot see such as mold and mildew. By removing the moldy odor, isn’t the carpet just helping to make a bad situation worse?
We bought and had installed approximately 1,000 sq ft of Puresque carpet 6 months ago. We bought this brand based on the marketing that it eliminates odors – important to us with 4 dogs. It has been the worst investment in our home ever. While odors are no longer a problems, stains are almost untreatable. The carpet seems to just hang on to standard everyday stains that no other carpet ever has. We have had it professional cleaned 2 times by our trusted carpet cleaner we have been using for 15 years. This product just does not clean well. In addition, it has seriously snagged in multiple places and runs and unravels like a sweater. We have several “bald” spots now even though we have knotted off the unraveling spots as we find them. We plan on replacing this costly disappointment as soon as possible. We would never recommend this product.
how does one go about makeing a budget when not a single entity out there wants to commit to a loose estimate of anything resembling a possible ball park figure of a price?!
@russ I don’t know where to find affordable green carpets but it looks like this is a great business opportunity for someone entreprenurial.
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