The wonders of woollen carpet

The cradle to grave concept for Bremworth’s woollen carpets may soon look like wool clip to compost thanks to their research and development of a fully compostable carpet.

In May 2021, Bremworth exited the synthetic carpet market, reducing their annual plastic consumption by 2,500 tonnes. A year later, they created a compostable rug prototype containing no plastic fibres.

Their next step – to create a compostable carpet with assistance from MPI’s Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund (SFFF), University of Auckland and AgResearch.

According to WasteMINZ, 148,000 tonnes of carpets go into New Zealand landfill sites every year. Smith says that a synthetic carpet takes around 200 years to break down in landfill.

Bremworth’s carpet is 87% natural, made from a wool facing, a synthetic primary backing, synthetic latex and a natural jute secondary backing. While the wool and jute are already compostable, Bremworth aims to replace the other inputs while ensuring a critical element – their 15 year warranty.

“We’re working on natural and green chemistry based alternatives, which are going to have no compromise to performance,” Greg Smith, chief executive of Bremworth says.

The creation of the carpet has included breaking it down to its components of dyes, insecticides, primary backing and latex and changing their make-up to consist of natural materials.

For the dye, they’ve created a plant-based green dye from mulberry leaves. The only downside, being its colour fastness.

“The performance of the natural dyes was not standing up to the performance of the other dyes, which tended to have more chemicals. And so we’re still working through that process on improving their colour fastness.”

Their next step is to source wool from regenerative or carbon-neutral farms. For the natural backing, they’re trialling a biodegradable latex. Bremworth has acquired the help of an Auckland University PhD student who Smith says is months away from reaching an end product.

Their final step is to find an insecticide that repels insects but also that insects like worms and beetles will eat at the stage of compostability.

Smith says that once the product is finalised and commercialised, the difficult part will be making decisions around the IP. As a commercial entity, their ultimate goal of creating better outcomes for the environment makes this decision challenging.

“If we want to make real change, you could argue, we shouldn’t sell the IP, we should give it away. If you give it away, then more people will use it, and then you’re having a far greater impact on the planet.”

In partnership with the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ, Wools of New Zealand are working to provide more education around the benefits of woollen carpets to those with respiratory issues.

Letitia Harding, chief executive of the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation says that their partnership with Wools of NZ will promote the improvement of health outcomes for this population.

Wool can absorb harmful air-bound compounds from paint, building materials, cooking appliances, or new furniture and improve air quality, particularly for those with respiratory issues, senior scientist at AgResearch, Steve McNeil says.

“It sucks them out of the air basically and holds onto them. Those compounds and other related compounds would not be good for asthmatics. No one should be breathing these sorts of compounds but more so people with respiratory problems.”

By filtering the air, a woollen carpet regulates humidity indoors and reduces the risk of mould growth.

“If someone opens the door from the bathroom and a lot of steam comes into the lounge, the wool carpet potentially could reduce that peak humidity floating around in the air and therefore reduce the risk of mould growing through the rest of the house,” McNeil says.

Steven Parsons, global marketing manager for Wools of New Zealand says the demise of woollen carpets over synthetics in the 1990’s was partly due to the lack of capable means to market wool.

On the other hand, the synthetics and hard floor industry were backed economically and technologically, Parsons says.

“The sheer amount of marketing might of the synthetics industry in the hard floor industry, the woollen carpet companies couldn’t compete with that. We just saw market share slip away and more people put hard flooring down.”

Parsons says that retailers developed a misinformed narrative that wool didn’t benefit those with respiratory issues, but rather caused irritation and worsened air quality. Consumers listened, and woollen carpets continued to slip away from the market.

“There’s a rule of marketing, the first lie sticks. They just had to plant that seed in people’s minds that was their investment. They didn’t offer any science.”

A particular example being that of the Swedish hard flooring industry, says McNeil.Source: Stuff NZ