Carpet and Wool Rug Cleaners: The Green Ones

We had to clean an area rug recently to have it ready for the winter months (we like the feel of the hardwood during the warmth months), so we started looking at Craig's List to see what local offers we can find. So after a few days of searching and asking, we learned that there are many carpet cleaners that are Green Seal Certified (see my previous post on the value of certifications) and we learned that, when it comes to carpets, there are other certifications, here's an excerpt from one of the site of the cleaner manufacturer we've chosen:

	“Green” Hotels Association: is committed to encourage, promote and support ecological consciousness in the Hospitality industry. For over ten years, “Green” Hotels Association is releasing a very comprehensive Guidelines and Ideas book revealing how to reduce bills as well as the hotel’s impact on the Environment. Evolut-Ion Carpet Cleaner is approved by “Green” Hotels Association. click here for more information...
	The U.S. Green Building is the nation’s foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work. click here for more information...
	Orbeco Inc. has joined Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, supporting the National Movement for Environmentally Sustainable Health Care. H2E is a voluntary partnership program sponsered by the American Hospital Association, the US EPA, Health Care without Harm and the American Nurses Association. H2E organizations are committed to the virtual elimination of mercury, general waste reduction, and the minimization of toxic substances used in healthcare. H2E supports the design, construction and cooperation of healthcare facilities that significantly improve our collective impact on human and environmental health. click here for more information...

If you need to clean a wool rug (like we did), Woolsafe has alist of cleaning substances that are safe for wool (neutral PH, low foam, all the things that are keeping the carpet looking nice). A few (very very few, I can say) are "green", and I'm listing here ALL of them from that list: Orbeco makes Evolut-ion carpet cleaner, Chemspec makes ECOgent and DFC105 and EnvirOx LLC make a line of products called H₂Orange₂; From the last link you'll also see they have a line of household (as in: consumer) cleaning products besides the industrial ones.

We used a cleaner that is using Evolut-ion by Orbeco; the rug looks clean but not perfect (in all truth, I don't think any cleaner will take coffee stains out of wool :)). We have another rug and we're considering buying the cleaning solution and trying with the carpet cleaning machine we never used, at that time we'll be able to somewhat compare the efficiency. In any way, the rug did not have ANY chemical smell whatsoever.