Cotton Mats
There are many reasons why to buy a recycled doormat not least the environmental impact that other materials have on the planet.
Cotton for instance consumes enormous quantities of water to cultivate. Although some claim that they use recycled cotton, often these are the sweepings from a factory floor where T shirts and other mass produced cotton products are made. So the term 'recycled' in that regard is a bit loose. Additionally these scraps will require bleaching to get the yarn back to a useable type for printing.
“No commodity is as polluting as cotton,” declares the
Sustainable Trade Initiative. Around 10 percent of all chemicals used globally agriculturally are used in the cotton industry. It is grown on less than 3 percent of the agricultural land on the planet. Pesticides make their way into groundwater and rivers. These pesticides interfere with the ecosystem by not only killing off pests but also the natural predators of those pests.
Cotton cultivation not only uses extremely high quantities of water, it uses pesticides which are harmful to the environment and humans. Organic cotton doesn't use pesticides but this only accounts for a very small percentage of all cotton production.
One T shirt and one pair of jeans requires over 20,000 liters of water.
A far more environmentally friendly option is to take waste and landfill plastics and have these spun into a yarn that can be used for a variety of purposes. Here at
OceanMats We specialise in doing just that. We take recycled yarn which is sustainably sourced from seas, watercourses and landfill and use this to make our lovely range of indoor doormats.
So, don't buy a cotton doormat, buy an
OceanMat
