Best Sustainable Rugs: Our Recommendations
- Best Overall: Safavieh Handmade Flatweave Jute Area Rug
- Best Cotton Rug: Lorena Canals Washable Rug
- Best Runner: Chardin Home Runner Rug
- Best Outdoor Rug: Fab Habitat Recycled Plastic Outdoor Rug
Each product featured here has been independently selected by the writer. Learn more about our review methodology here. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn a commission.
Why Switch to a Sustainable, Nontoxic Rug?
Many people want to secure an area rug in the most affordable, fastest and easiest way. However, that often leaves your choices limited to rugs that are most likely not sustainably or ethically made.
Most ordinary new rugs and carpets contain harmful chemicals called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. They can off-gas for up to five years, emitting VOCs in your home and causing short- and long-term health issues including headaches, dizziness, liver and kidney damage, and even cancer in animals and humans. An eco-friendly rug choice avoids these adverse health effects.
You may also wonder why you need a special cleaner filled with questionable chemicals for a rug. In some ways, you end up spending more money over time on a synthetic rug that ends up in the landfill.
By choosing home decor products made from sustainable materials, you can make a positive impact and promote a kinder and healthier planet.
Full Reviews of Our Top Picks
Best Overall: Safavieh Handmade Flatweave Jute Area Rug
Safavieh
Safavieh is a trusted name in natural rug making that has been around for over 100 years. Its handmade flatweave jute rug collection contains size and shape options ranging from 3-by-5-foot area rugs to 5-by-6-foot ovals to 9-by-12-foot runners. The rug is handwoven, and the beige color and traditional weave of sustainably-harvested sisal and seagrass make it a classic option for any space.
Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 600 Amazon ratings
Standout Review: “These rugs are absolutely awesome… They're both easy on the eyes and the feet. We have a round one in the entryway and an oval one at the bottom of the stairs… They are easy to vacuum and sweep, combining pleasing aesthetics with functionality and durability.” — Alison via Amazon
Why Buy: Safavieh is known for its high-quality yet affordable products. The flatweave jute rug is beautifully handwoven and provides a classic, minimalist look to any area of the home.
Best Cotton Rug: Lorena Canals Washable Rug
Lorena Canals
Lorena Canals’ washable cotton rugs are made with a base of 97% recycled cotton and use only natural dyes in the coloring process. They’re handcrafted by artisans in India and can give a warm yet modern touch to your home. This particular rug measures just over 5.5 by 8 feet, but there are other size options available.
The company’s RugCycled program utilizes textile leftovers from the production of its cotton and wool rugs, helping Lorena Canals’ overall process become less wasteful. Plus, every purchase helps a child in North India attend school.
Customer Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars with under 10 Amazon ratings
Standout Review: “Taking 1 star away because by no means it can be washed in a regular washer machine… Now do I like this rug? I LOVE IT! It is worth the trip to the laundromat.” — Ann via Amazon
Why Buy: If you’re looking for something you can throw in the wash after a spill or accident, this is one of the best sustainable rugs to consider.
Best Runner: Chardin Home Runner Rug
Chardin Home
Chardin Home collects cotton rags from different factories and upcycles them into multicolor rugs. No two rugs are exactly the same, though the company makes every effort to best match them if you buy more than one of the same kind. The most popular size is this 2-by-7-foot, but the rug options span from 2-by-5 feet to up to 8-by-10 feet. The rugs are also reversible and long-lasting.
Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars with almost 1,500 Amazon ratings
Standout Review: “With this rug, suddenly everything goes together beautifully! … I have an 8-year-old, two dogs (5 pounds and 40 pounds), and a cat. I’ve had this rug for a bit, and it has held up so well.” — Lauren W. via Amazon
Why Buy: This affordable, colorful runner is reversible and withstands your pets while being healthy for them. It’s one of the best sustainable rugs for narrow spaces.
Best Outdoor Rug: Fab Habitat Recycled Plastic Outdoor Rug
Fab Habitat
Made from recycled plastic straws, this rug by Fab Habitat is perfect for outdoor spaces. Some people also use these indoors (I personally use an outdoor rug under my bed). The rug is fade-resistant and stain-deterrent. The material also means the rug will never be threatened by moisture.
This 5-by-8-foot rug comes in several eclectic and oceanically-colorful designs from jodhpur blue to monochromatic teal and a more practical blue. At an affordable price, it helps save both the planet and your purse.
Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 1,100 Amazon ratings
Standout Review: “This rug lives up to its reputation. We just moved to Florida, and it rains almost daily since we got here. This rug doesn’t hold water, and it feels smooth under your feet.” — Katelyn via Amazon
Why Buy: The U.S. city-by-city ban on plastic straws started around 2018, but they still overtake landfills and take ages to decompose. A recycled plastic straw rug helps provide one solution to this while being stylish, stain-deterrent, fade-resistant and easy to clean. Just shake it out and hose it down.
How to Choose the Best Sustainable Rug
There are a few factors to consider when purchasing the best sustainable rug for your home:
- Natural fibers: What material is the rug made out of? When looking for nontoxic rugs, choose natural fibers like organic cotton, jute, wool and sisal. Agave sisalana is the botanical name for sisal, which is native to southern Mexico. Many fruit plants also make cozy natural textile materials in place of genetically modified cotton.
- Material harvesting and manufacturing: Was the material ethically harvested? Was the rug sustainably made? Is it an ethically made rug? Was the rug treated with any chemicals?
- Cost: A handmade rug understandably costs more than a mass-produced one. However, you should also shop around and stay within budget.
- Style: Many natural fiber and sustainable rugs are varied and unique in design. Have a look in mind when shopping for an organic rug to ensure you will be happy with the aesthetic.
Note that some natural fibers, like jute, can shed and may tend to unravel lightly in some areas over time. That’s the nature of the material.
Frequently Asked Questions: Best Nontoxic Rugs
How do you know if a rug is toxic?
A rug’s surface can consist of natural fibers. However, many don’t consider that the rug's backing and underlay padding could contain toxic materials. All parts of the rug should be produced with natural materials. Unfortunately, you may also find hidden toxins in the form of formaldehyde, stain deterrent treatments and flame retardants on the surface of the rug.
Are jute rugs environmentally friendly?
Yes, jute rugs can be very environmentally friendly. Jute is a sturdy natural fiber that many consider to be one of the most eco-conscious materials out there. Jute comes from a tropical plant and is both recyclable and biodegradable. Jute fibers are spun into durable threads to create such products as twine, mats and rugs.
Are handwoven rugs ethical and sustainable?
It is ethical to purchase from a craftsperson who used their skills and traditional practices to thoughtfully make a beautiful and sustainable rug. However, many products that are labeled “sustainable” can still be produced unethically and illegally via child labor and human rights violations. A good resource to check is Amnesty.org, which recently discovered human rights violations by larger U.S. companies in the production of “sustainable” palm oil.
Research each product and manufacturer across various platforms, always checking reviews and non-biased news sources. Where possible, purchase ethical rugs from craftspeople directly. Local maker collectives and arts organizations are great places to start.
How do you clean a natural fiber rug?
Drenching a natural fiber rug with wet shampoo or steam can cause damage and discoloration. Spot-clean natural fiber rugs with a mild detergent, or use club soda for acidic stains.
Routinely sweep or vacuum your rugs lightly, using a rug beater as appropriate. You can also buy a dry cleaning powder that is compatible with natural fiber rugs. Simply sprinkle this powder on the rug and vacuum it up. Take more heavily soiled rugs to a green dry cleaner if care instructions allow.
With fair labor practices and ethical standards in place, a rug made of natural fibers is a much more eco-friendly option than a rug made with toxic chemicals. Be wary of companies that greenwash their marketing with sustainability claims they fail to deliver on.
Where possible, consider handcrafted rugs when shopping for a rug for your home. It’s much easier to verify sustainability, and you support a talented individual and the local economy with your purchase.
The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) announced Tuesday that it had received the largest ever donation to help map and protect these underground networks that help store carbon and transport nutrients through the soil.
"This is an extremely important conservation project,” Jane Goodall, Ph.D., DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace, said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “An understanding of underground fungal networks is essential to our efforts to protect the soil, on which life depends, before it is too late.”
Goodall is one of a group of prominent writers and conservationists who are acting as advisors on the project, alongside Michael Pollan, Merlin Sheldrake and Fungi Foundation founder Giuliana Furci.
The project emerges from a growing understanding of the importance of fungal networks for trees and other plants. These fungi allow trees to share nutrients through something that has come to be known as the Wood Wide Web, as BBC News explained. The network is understudied but extensive, stretching for 450 quadrillion kilometers (approximately 280 quadrillion miles), half the width of the Milky Way galaxy.
However, these fungal networks are threatened by human activities including agriculture, fertilizers, pesticides, deforestation and urbanization. Despite this, plans to protect biodiversity hotspots ignore more than 50 percent of the life below the soil.
“Not a moment too soon, the public is waking up to the importance of the mycelial underground to the health of our planet and indeed to our survival as a species,” Pollan said in the press release.
SPUN aims to use machine learning to identify fungal biodiversity hotspots and take 10,000 samples from these ecosystems over the next 18 months. The first collection will take place in April 2022 in the highlands of Patagonia. Other potential network hotspots include the Canadian tundra, the Mexican plateau, Morocco, the western Sahara, Israel’s Negev desert, Kazakhstan’s steppes, Tibet’s grasslands and Russia’s taiga, The Guardian reported. Once the maps are finished, SPUN hopes to identify the underground ecosystems that are most at risk and make plans to protect them.
The donation that will boost this project came from the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust.
“Just below our feet lies an invaluable ally in mitigating climate change – vast hidden fungal networks,” Jeremy Grantham, who has pledged 98 percent of his net worth to fighting the climate crisis, said in the press release. “Billions of tons of carbon dioxide flow annually from plants into fungal networks. And yet, these carbon sinks are poorly understood. In working to map and harness this threatened but vital resource for life on earth, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks is pioneering a new chapter in global conservation."
Confocal 3D-image of a fungal network with reproductive spores containing nuceli (smaller dots). Vasilis Kokkoris
Released on Cyber Monday, a new report from Ship It Zero coalition members Stand.earth and Pacific Environment details the relationship between four major retailers that ship goods to the U.S. — Walmart, Amazon, Target and IKEA — and the fossil-fueled carrier companies that make that shipping possible.
“Major retail companies and cargo carriers are flush with cash from pandemic-driven record breaking profits and are tightening their already close relationships,” Stand.earth shipping campaigns director Kendra Ulrich said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. “This is an unprecedented opportunity for retail brands and cargo carriers to work together to immediately reduce their maritime emissions from their existing container fleet and build zero-emissions shipping into their growth model.”
Ship It Zero
Shady Routes
The new report builds on the work of the Shady Ships report released by Ship It Zero in July. That report detailed the 15 retail giants that caused the most air and climate pollution by shipping goods to the U.S. The new report focuses on just four of these companies, selected for both their brand recognition and the amount of pollution they contribute.
Together, the four companies’ U.S. imports were responsible for 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions between 2018 and 2020, as much as the yearly emissions from five coal-fired power plants. The report, titled Shady Routes: How Big Retail and their Carriers Pollute along Key Ocean Shipping Corridors, was able to better understand these emissions by mapping out the stores’ preferred routes and revealing their preferred carriers.
Walmart is the company whose U.S. imports generate the most pollution, and the report helped explain why. The retail giant tends to ship its goods from Asia all the way to the East Coast of the U.S., preferring ports in Houston, Savannah and Norfolk, Virginia.
It’s preferred carrier is also the greatest polluter among all the carriers studied in the report: French company CMA CGM. This company made $31.5 billion in revenue in 2020 and accounted for 68 percent of Walmart’s shipping emissions and 33 percent of all four retailers’ emissions.
Amazon and Target both prefer West Coast routes from China to Los Angeles/ Long Beach and Seattle/ Tacoma, while IKEA is increasingly moving goods by rail from China to Europe, and then shipping to Philadehpia and Baltimore. IKEA’s growing reliance on rail may be why its shipping emissions appear to be going down.
Congestion Crisis/ Pollution Crisis
Understanding Target and Amazon’s routes in particular helps illuminate their role in the ongoing congestion and pollution crisis impacting frontline communities who live near West Coast port cities. This finding was particularly exciting for Ship It Zero campaign lead Dawny'all Heydari, who works in Los Angeles.
Pollution from container ships is a longstanding public-health crisis for the LA-area portside communities of San Pedro, Wilmington and West Long Beach, which have a life expectancy eight years lower than the LA county average. However, the increase in shipping caused by the pandemic has only made the situation worse. Target, for example, has doubled its digital sales during that time.
“The congestion crisis brought about by the pandemic, the turn to online shopping and in-house leisure, as well as holiday related trends, has shined an additional light on this issue,” Heydari told EcoWatch.
There are now more than 100 fossil-fueled container ships stalled beside the ports of LA and Long Beach, and this is only making the pollution problem worse, according to figures from the California Air Resources Board.
Since the congestion crisis started, “ships alone are pumping an additional 20 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides into the air each day, which is the equivalent of adding 5.8 million passenger cars to the region, and we also know that ships have added as much particulate matter pollution to the Southern California air basin as 100,000 heavy duty trucks,” Heydari said.
The California backlog has also spread the crisis up the coast to Seattle and Tacoma, where imports rose 40 percent in 2020 compared to 2018.
Urgency of Now
The report’s findings emphasize the need for immediate action to reduce and ultimately end shipping emissions. From a public health perspective, there is a “fierce urgency of now” to prevent the 260,000 early deaths caused by fossil-fuel shipping emissions every year, Heydari said. And, from a climate perspective, international shipping contributes three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If the industry were a country, it would be the sixth-highest emitter.
“If we don’t rapidly cut carbon emissions this decade, we could see a scenario where global warming reaches over 10 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels by 2100, leading to a truly catastrophic scenario where we will see problems including uncontrollable wildfires, climate refugees, uncontrollable hurricanes, rapid loss of Arctic sea ice, rapid changes to our environment, etc,” Heydari explained.
Towards this end, Ship It Zero is demanding that the four companies and other major retailers take three actions:
- Stop using dirty ships: there are technologies available like wind-assisted propulsion and slow steaming that could reduce emissions by 30 percent per trip.
- Start using net-zero emissions vessels by 2024, when they are likely to become available.
- Commit to 100 percent zero-emissions shipping by 2030.
Heydari said that Ship It Zero “welcomed” a recent pledge companies including Amazon and IKEA to purchase only zero-carbon vessels by 2040, but argued that it ultimately did not move fast enough, given both the importance of reducing emissions this decade and the fact that zero-carbon vessels should be available long before then.
In the meantime, does that mean you shouldn’t be taking advantage of Cyber Monday deals until these and other retailers have changed their ways? Heydari said that Ship It Zero was focusing on corporate accountability rather than consumer behavior. What concerned individuals can do is visit Ship It Zero’s website and sign a petition urging the four companies to take action.
“The problem is fixable if these companies transition to zero-emisson vessels,” Heydari said. “There’s no reason why we wouldn't have a functioning economy where people’s needs are met.”
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“Introductions to safe, intact wild landscapes are vital for the future of vulnerable species like white rhino, which are under considerable human-induced pressures,” African Parks’ CEO Peter Fearnhead said in the announcement.
White rhinos are considered a near threatened species by the IUCN Red List. There are currently 10,080 mature individuals in the wild, and their population is decreasing, primarily due to poaching for the illegal trade in rhino horns.
Preparing to load rhino crates onto aircraft in South Africa. Martin Meyer / African Parks
The historic move relocated the animals from Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa to Akagera National Park in Rwanda. The animals, 19 females and 11 males, were first driven to Durban, then flown to Kigali and finally driven again to Akagara, The Guardian reported. The journey took six months to organize and 40 hours to complete. The rhinos were partially sedated for the flight.
“The rhinos weren’t sedated on the plane in the sense they were totally lying down, as that’s bad for their sternums,” African Parks’ Jes Gruner told The Guardian. “But they were partly drugged, so they could still stand up and keep their bodily functions normal, but enough to keep them calm and stable.”
The goal of the move is to expand white rhino’s African range to give them extra protection. The animals have never before lived in Rwanda.
White rhinos introduced to Akagera in Rwanda. Gael Vande Weghe / African Parks
“It’s absolutely vital to get white rhinos spread across the continent, where they have safe habitats, and not necessarily only where they used to be,” Gruner said. “We need to spread the risk. If some countries can’t get hold of the illegal wildlife trade, white rhinos and rhinos in general might be pushed to the brink of extinction. We have to do everything we can to address their safety.”
Around 95 percent of the rhino horn currently moving from Africa to Southeast Asia comes from poaching, according to IUCN. The horn has traditionally been used both in Chinese medicine and for ornamental purposes. Historically, poaching has not impacted white rhino populations overall, until they decreased by 15 percent between 2012 and 2015.
If the translocated rhinos enjoy their new home in Rwanda, it is possible that more will join them in this safe haven. The park could easily accommodate 500 to 1,000, Gruner told The Guardian. This is something that Rwanda is happy to facilitate.
White rhino in Phinda Private Game Reserve. Martin Meyer / African Parks
“This is an opportunity for Rwanda to substantially advance its contribution to rhino conservation, with Akagera poised to become a globally important sanctuary for black and now white rhinoceros,” Rwanda Development Board Acting Chief Tourism Officer Ariella Kageruka said in the announcement. “This is timely for the conservation of these incredibly threatened species. We’re extremely proud of our conservation partnerships and our national parks, which are playing a pivotal role in meeting biodiversity targets and in driving sustainable, transformative, equitable socio-economic growth.”
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