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Carpets

Carpets

including rugs

Carpeting remains a staple of interior design for its acoustic benefits, thermal comfort, touch and aesthetics. However, the sector faces significant scrutiny regarding its environmental footprint, particularly concerning low recycling rates and the high volume of waste sent to landfill. 

Ethical concerns also persist, specifically regarding hidden labour practices in global supply chains, difficult to recycle materials and animal welfare in wool, angora, silk production. Responsible specification requires moving beyond aesthetic selection to rigorous due diligence on material health, social equity, and end-of-life circularity, ensuring that comfort does not come at the cost of human or planetary wellbeing.

Facts

  • 467,000 tonnes of carpet and textile flooring waste was generated in the UK in 2020, of which only 65,500 tonnes (14%) was sent to destinations other than landfill or combustion. There are many difficulties in finding alternative cheap, scalable, and environmentally friendly end-of-life routes for carpet, as it is a long-lasting, hard-wearing composite material. SOURCE
  • Carpet is found in approximately 90% of British homes, representing a widespread and constant stream of both domestic and commercial waste SOURCE

Key Points

Buy quality  

Encourage clients to buy quality, long lasting carpets and rugs. Many rugs have a resale value. Consider sourcing preloved rugs.

Durability

A darker or patterned carpet may hide stains or wear more easily and therefore have a longer life span. You may wish to consider mothproof treatment, although this can introduce chemicals/toxins to the product which may impact indoor air quality. Ask about toxic chemical levels used. Thorough and regular cleaning can help prevent a moth infestation. Ensure the carpet can be easily maintained and will last as long as possible- where possible get the manufacturer to provide maintenance details/ cleaning kits. Carpets can be easy to damage and difficult to patch repair, therefore are often replaced quickly.

Consider material and usage 

Coir, sisal and seagrass work well in high traffic areas.

Who are the users? 

Loop carpets are best avoided for clients that have cats and dogs or that frequently wear shoes such as stilettos.

Potential toxic chemical content 

Carpets can contain toxic chemicals within their composition such as benzene and other VOCs in the adhesive, ortho-phthlates in PVC backing and perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are sometimes present in stain resistant coatings.

Low VOC Emissions  

Look for Indoor Air Comfort Gold certification or Cradle to Cradle Certified. These certifications can indicate that products will have minimal off-gassing of harmful chemicals.

Use and reuse 

Preloved, lightly used carpets tiles can be relaid for a new useful life.

Use third-party certification schemes 

Use third party certification schemes but exercise caution. Sometimes they can be little more than a tick-box or self-certification with no independent authority and no remediation. You may need to do your own due diligence and research. Ask for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for transparent comparisons - but don’t depend on them qualify a product as good.

Materials passport 

Does the product have one? A materials passport acts as comprehensive digital log for further uses of a product.  These passports catalogue product specifications to keep products at their highest reuse value. They include manufacturer details, production sites, product codes, lifespan, material composition, whole-life carbon footprint, recycled content and end-of-life recyclability.

Child labour

Child labour and forced labour is present in some carpet production. Many rugs are hand-made (knotted, tufted, woven) and these rugs are typically not produced by the exporter but by sub-contractors and home workers.

  • These informal workers are hidden from view, unprotected and exploited.
  • The use of child, forced and bonded labour is widespread within these hidden supply chains.
  • The use of child labour (under 14 years old) is illegal in most producer countries.
  • Child labour prevents children from attending school & getting an education.
  • Children are often forced to work up to 16 hours per day for little, if any pay. This practice perpetuates extreme poverty, poor health & shortened life.
  • Forced & bonded adult labour traps adult workers into inflated debt & exploits them.

When buying from countries where child labour is known to exist e.g. India, Nepal, Afghanistan, insist all rugs are independently certified and labelled by an independent scheme such as GoodWeave. Doing so will provide the best assurance that no child or adult was exploited in the production of your product.

Hybrid carpets

Be wary of so called 'monstrous hybrid' carpets. An example would be where a PVC-backed carpets where nylon or wool fibres are fused onto polyvinyl chloride (PVC) backings. This synthetic backing cannot currently be safely separated from the natural top which means that the entire carpet cannot be recycled.

High recycled content 

Consider using carpets that include recycled post consumer PET or fishing nets.

Compostable biobased fibres

Consider using carpets made of jute, sisal or coir which are renewable and have a lower carbon footprint than synthetics.

Wool

Wool is used frequently for carpets and rugs and may come from sheep that have been mulesed. Surgical mulesing is a controversial procedure which removes wool bearing skin from a sheep to prevent blowfly strike, causing pain and tissue injuring on the animal in the proess. Wool from South Africa, New Zealand, China and South America is considered lower risk as these sources suffer much lower incidents of blowfly and mulesing is not commonly used. 

When specifying wool carpets and rugs you could also ask: 

  • Is it Responsible Wool certified? Has the wool come from farms with the highest animal welfare practices to protect sheep?
  • Is it recycled wool? What percentage is recycled content, post consumer recycled content and factory waste recycled content? Try to purchase the product with the highest proportion of recycled material.

Shearling 

Sometimes used in rugs and carpets, made from the skin of lambs with wool still attached. Sheepskin is more common.

Silk 

Commonly found in rug manufacturing. Produced by boiling silkworm cocoons  killing the larvae inside. Silk is often sourced from countries with limited labour and welfare regulation.

Angora 

Mostly produced in China, where fur from Angora rabbits is harvested (plucked) from the live animal. This method is widely reported to cause pain and distress and rough handling is common.

Cruelty free alternatives

Consider high-quality plant-based (e.g., jute, sisal, cotton) or recycled fibre alternatives that offer similar aesthetics and performance without animal exploitation

Carpet Tiles: Modular and low-impact solutions 

Where possible, specify carpet tiles over broadloom. Tile format allows for easy replacement of damaged areas rather than full-room re-carpeting, therefore significantly reducing waste. If using carpet tiles, consider a glueless system or loose lay that allows easy removal, reuse or recycling of materials.

Recycling schemes 

Old carpets can take decades to break down in landfills. Work with suppliers who offer take-back or recycling schemes for old carpets.

RESOURCES

Recycling schemes

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