A gentler footprint
Home » Good Guide » Renovation » Renovation » A gentler footprintWool carpet has a head start in the sustainability stakes—it’s made from a natural fibre, farmed from a sustainable resource and the whole product, backing and all, is biodegradable
Cavalier Bremworth has been making wool carpets since 1959. But half a century of experience doesn’t seem to have made them complacent. Some 50 year olds might be a bit cynical about the whole green thing. But in 2006 Cavalier Bremworth was awarded Environmental Choice NZ accreditation and became the first company in the world to gain an internationally recognised eco-label across its entire wool carpet range. Shortly afterwards it gained the equivalent accreditation in Australia from Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA).
This means their carpets gain maximum credit points in the Green Star Office Design rating tools used by architects to create environmentally friendly commercial buildings. A Cavalier Bremworth broadloom wool carpet was used in the first 4-star Green Star Office refurbishment project at 92 Albert Street in Auckland. The same carpet was also chosen for the recently completed Club Tower in Christchurch—the first five star green building in the South Island.
And Cavalier Bremworth has ISO 14001 accreditation and was a founding member of the New Zealand Green Building Council.
All this was not just some paper shuffling exercise. With the product 100 percent designed and made in New Zealand, and all the company’s plants based in the North Island, transport energy costs were already pretty minimal. But the company upgraded its Napier wool scouring facility to reduce water usage and improve the quality of wastewater discharge. Biodegradable detergents were introduced and much friendlier treatments and processes were introduced into the firm’s dyeing and spinning mills in Napier and Wanganui.
But to return to where we came in, all this has built on the fact that these people just know carpet, and know that not all carpets are created equal. Basically there’s got to be few better tests of quality in a sustainable product than walking around all over it for years.
Cavalier Bremworth’s reputation for producing high quality, premium carpets, is built on the knowledge of how costly cheap carpets can turn out to be, both for you and for the environment. Quick ‘do-up’ homes for sale in recent years have seen a lot of low quality, cheap carpet installed. It looked great on the day of the open home but hasn’t lasted the distance. New owners, disappointed with how it is performing, are faced with replacing a carpet that should have lasted significantly longer. Disposing of old carpet only adds more waste to already bulging landfills.
That’s why Cavalier Bremworth recommends investing in quality carpet, preferably graded Extra Heavy duty. This gives you more wool per square cm than a lower grade carpet. This means it looks better, feels better, and lasts significantly longer. It also will help lower those heating bills. Studies have shown some homes have saved as much as 12 percent with wool carpet when there are temperature differences between the indoor air and that under the floor.
And the health benefits of wool carpet don’t stop at the end of your cosy warm toes. A good quality wool carpet helps to regulate the humidity and improve the air quality in your home. Wool naturally absorbs moisture when the atmosphere is damp and releases it when the atmosphere is dry. It traps airborne particles which can be damaging to asthmatics and those with respiratory problems. And it filters out volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—unwanted toxins and odours that can cause irritation to humans.
Basically there’s got to be few better tests of quality in a sustainable product than walking around all over it for years
Speaking of irritations—sometimes people’s real footprints can be as disruptive as their ecological ones, if they are tramping round your house and you can hear every single one. Wool carpet virtually eliminates floor impact noise produced by footfalls, chairs scraped across the floor and objects dropped.
Cavalier Bremworth acknowledges how hard it can be to dispose of unwanted carpet, so it gives a full run down on its website of all the ways you can recycle it, instead of sending it to landfill. In the last year, the company itself has given nearly five kilometres of uplifted waste carpet as weed matting squares to schools and councils. Studies commissioned from AgResearch have proven that carpet is a superb weed mat material, aiding the retention of soil moisture, boosting plant growth and suppressing weeds.
Pakuranga Heights School did some trial planting with the carpet weed mats and found it out-performed their other weed mat substances (including a commercially bought one) in terms of bio-activity under the soil, weed suppression and moisture retention.
And Cavalier Bremworth is constantly looking at ways to reduce its own footprint, not just in its manufacturing processes but right across the company in terms of energy efficiency, waste recycling and further exploration into environmentally positive uses for unwanted carpet.
This is carpet which supports you and works with the Earth, sometimes literally.
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