More than a decade after its U.S. entry, chemical-free carpet gets mainstream attention and could be part of a market that is “ready to explode”
Some rolled their eyes and suppressed laughter at the idea that a chemical-free, biodegradable, un-dyed carpet could make it in mainstream America. But when Brian Cox saw Nature’s Carpet in the early 1990s, something told him it would be a winner.
After seeing this wool carpet at a Domotex trade show in Germany, Cox returned to his office at the Colin Campbell distribution company in Vancouver, BC, he organized his presentation, and he began calling on retailers. After the Canadians started selling it, Cox crossed the U.S. border and called on one of the country’s first green-building gurus in Bellingham, WA. The builder in turn installed the product in several green homes, including his own, and he helped Cox introduce Nature’s Carpet to the Environmental Home Center in Seattle, which would later be known as EcoHaus.
“That’s what broke open the United States market,” Cox recalls. “It went from there, all the way down the West Coast to California.”
We once said what could be more natural and less toxic than a tile floor? It is baked dirt, after all, fired at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Surely, this heat would burn off organics present in clay or binders, resulting in a product that emits no VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds).
Well, as with all green interior products these days, more and more people are saying, “prove it.”
That’s why there is an indoor-air quality certification requirement within the Green Squared Certification, an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard that recently has gone into use for tile manufacturers.
“The concern is anything added to the product after firing,” says Ryan Marino, standards development officer for the Tile Council of North America.
