Rubber mulches have got lots of benefits in today’s world. There are several research organizations which have declared rubber mulches not to be harmful when used. They can be used a widespread for a play area. This will offer better grip for the players and also acts as a shock absorbing material. This will prevent the players from getting injured. Parents can be relaxed allowing their children to play in the ground. Rain can no longer play the spoilsport when you have the urge to play. The expected life span for the mulches is said to be 20 to 25 years. They are highly inexpensive and the most preferred one. It is important to stick to mulches that are obtained from natural sources.

If you are one of those garden-fanatics, do not despair. The latest trend nowadays is to dress flower beds and borders with rubber mulch, which are easy to maintain and practically require no labor to put up. A lot of high-end nurseries have followed this trend, and are now sporting different kinds of rubber mulch.

Bring innovation to your garden
More and more people have come to appreciate colorful rubber mulch. It is not surprising to see rubber mulch in green, black, and curiously, blue. Moreover, every time rain pours, the mulch gets free washing, and so there really is no need to fret over mulch maintenance.

Save money with rubber mulch
At first glance, it would appear that rubber mulch would cost you money. After all, you would have to buy the mulch and have it spread over your garden. But because there is no more need for you to shell out money for maintenance and upkeep, in the long run, you would realize that you are saving more.

Rubber mulch for all seasons
Also, rubber mulch does not float or get blown away, as it is relatively heavy. Thus, in case tough rain showers visit your home, you would not have to worry about your garden getting swept away. More importantly, rubber mulch does not rot and will not attract fungi as wood mulches do.

In winter, this rubber mulch protects the roots of your precious plants. Come spring and summer, rubber mulch discourages the growth of weeds and maintains the levels of temperature of the soil beds.

What are you waiting for? Now is the time to get your dream garden using rubber mulch, effortlessly.

Consider this: out of the 71.9 million new automobiles that were sold worldwide, around 20 million or 28 percent were sold in the United States and Canada. That’s more cars sold compared to Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa combined. And while it’s true that the prohibitive cost of fuel has slightly put a slump on the automotive industry in the U.S., the car-loving culture of Americans is still something that is embedded in its culture.

And I don’t need to tell you about the harmful effects of improperly disposed tires to one’s health and the environment. Although numerous steps have been taken by the government to reduce the ill effects of this dangerous practice, it is still seen as a big problem. And you may not know it, but there is actually an emerging advocacy group focused solely against burning of tires and consequently recycling them to put to good use. With the rate that it’s going, some states still have too many tires burned systematically in plants.

Just think about it: millions upon millions of tires end up being useless.

This is where rubber mulch comes into the picture. Rubber mulch, consists of useless tire buffings or some nuggets that come from tires. These are ground up whole once the steel parts are removed. And the best part is, almost any tire can be used for this purpose. It doesn’t matter if it comes from a high-end luxury sedan or a large truck and a trailer. And, of course, since rubber mulch is primary and best used in playgrounds, using it not only lessen the potential wastefulness and excess of tire production, it likewise benefits your children (since it’s been deemed safest of all artificial playground surfaces). A win-win situation if I ever see one.

So when you think about it, while it sounds totally farfetched, you can actually do your part for the environment by something as simple as using rubber mulch on your playground.

When we look at the things that recycled rubber is being used for today, there are quite a lot of them, but are there enough?

There are things like rubber mulch, containers (large and small), rubber compounds to cover playgrounds and other types of flooring and many more things, but are we really using recycled rubber to its full potential?

We could have furniture that is partly made from recycled rubber, as long as it is coated with a flame retardant substance. What about using it in the stage building industry? These are just two ideas that I’m sure would need a lot more thought and would probably never happen, but why are they not worth thinking about?

There are so many other different uses for recycled rubber, that no one has even thought of yet and there is money making opportunities out there, even one which while writing this I have thought of myself, but I’m not going to tell you yet, because I want to check it out first.

How about the fairings on motorcycles? Okay they may weigh a bit more than the usual type of lightweight things that are used to make your bike go faster, but they would not smash to bits when hit, causing more destruction and pain than necessary. Golf carts, there is an idea, they don’t go fast, there not prone to having accidents and they are not viably eco friendly in the way they are made. After all most of them are made out of plastic or fiber glass.

If you can make a sturdy container, that is going to be put on a ship and bashed about in rough seas. Then why not make a pair of crutches out of recycled rubber? If not the crutches themselves, then what about the grips on the handles or the bits on the bottom to stop you from slipping about? They are made of rubber any way, so why not recycled rubber?

There has to be thousands more things that we could use recycled rubber for and we need to start using recycled rubber for these non-existent things or we are going to be left with piles of it, or even putting it into our atmosphere, which we are trying to stop by recycling it, aren’t we? So let’s find some more uses for it.

Accidents will always happen in and around the garden when children are playing, after all we can’t keep an eye on them all of the time, we are only human. One of the things we can do though is make sure that where they play is as safe as it can be.

Rubber mulch is usually considered for use just around the plants, and it is very good for this. It lasts a lot longer than wooden mulch, does not give the plants fungal diseases and does not smell horrible when it gets wet.

Something that is not really considered by most people is that recycled rubber mulch can also be used around your kids’ playground equipment as a safety feature. You can have it laid down as a rubber compound, which is like having rubber tarmac or you can have the rubber mulch granules, which do come in various sizes and is a lot safer than the wooden mulch.

You will have to make sure that you lay enough down to create a safe landing zone for your children, but that is the same whatever you put down. Unlike having the wooden stuff, rubber mulch lasts a good ten years longer, is not sprayed with chemicals so you end up with dead insects in it and it has no offending odor to it the older it gets. Even if your kids get it in their mouths, they will come to no harm.

When they land on the rubber mulch, even if it is a bad fall, they are far less likely to cut themselves or break anything. Of course there is no guarantee that they won’t break anything, but the chances are definitely and greatly reduced. Rather than letting your kids land on a hard or muddy surface, or something that can give them splinters and cut them anyway. Put down something that gives them a bit of bounce and will give you the feeling they are safe in their play area. Put down rubber mulch.

Rubber mulch is not toxic. In fact studies conducted by Maryland Environmental Services rubber much can even be swallowed, and pass straight through the digestive system of both humans and animals without harming them. Colored chips are also manufactured using non toxic colorings too. Even the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) approves of rubber mulch, as they are impressed by the production of rubber mulch, which means that non-biodegradable products are recycled and reused instead of ending up on the landfill site.

Doesn’t rubber mulch have steel in it that can hurt children and harm horses hooves?

Today’s rubber mulch granules are small rubber chips that are not likely to still have steel wire in them. The best rubber mulch producing companies also have state of the art magnet installed in the production process. This enables these top companies to guarantee that their rubber mulch is 99.99% free of steel.

Just How Safe is Rubber Mulch?

Rubber mulch is the safest surface that can be used for playground and equestrian surfaces as tested by many state and federal agencies like the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. These agencies have completed many studies and tests measuring the shock absorption rates of different surfaces. The one surface keeps coming out on top is rubber mulch. Rubber mulch beats sand, other types of mulch, bluestone and shavings. It reduces the impact when a child falls and helps prevent arthritis in horses legs.

What about surfaces made from other rubber materials?

This is answered in the Under Foot 2000 edition: “Rubber for footing applications is generally made from recycled tires. There are rubber footings available made from products such as sneakers, golf grips, conveyor belts, and lacrosse balls. However, compared to tire rubber they are lighter weight and tend to blow or wash away and will break down over time”

So you can see that rubber mulch is indeed a good surfacing choice for both playgrounds and equestrian surfacing, with the further added benefits of rubber mulch being indestructible so it doesn’t fall part or decay, it doesn’t freeze as it doesn’t retain moisture and is practically dust free.

We all should know, that plastic bags are bad for our environment, yet we still use them everyday, people discard them without a thought, supermarkets and smaller shops are still dispensing them as if they are the only thing we can carry our shopping in and they don’t cost us any money.

The action of using environmentally friendly shopping bags, is more of a thing these days, but not everyone will use them or remember to take them to the store. Some shops have even done away with using the plastic bag altogether, although not enough shops even think about it. People in the past had to pay a penny for a plastic bag in most shops, but now we get them for free.

Should we not be put off using them even more?

We should have to pay for them again, or have signs up in shops telling us how bad they are. We could even go to a bit of an extreme and shame people who use plastic bags all the time.

In the past, when plastic bags where not as popular, most people had certain bags, made of hessian, cotton or some other material, that where used specifically for shopping, then the plastic bags really hit the planet and everyone was carrying everything in them.

Today you can see plastic bags, that have written on them that they are more biodegradable. What a cop out, they are still an eye sore, when people discard them and they will take years to degrade. The plastic bag industry should be stopped outright, no mucking around, we should all use bags that we can be safe in the thought, that they are not going to break easily and will be used over and over again, some for years. Also they will not end up hanging from trees, round the neck of an animal, in the stomach of fish and even suffocating children.

The only environment left to us to explore more, is the sea and we are killing it with plastic. The amount of plastic bags in the oceans and seas amount to so many tonnes, that it is quite unbelievable, this is killing a natural food source, not just for us, but for everything that lives there. Did you know that marine biologists have found micro grains of plastic, from bags in the smallest of creatures, which is food for many fish that we then eat?

So do our environment a favor, recycle your remaining plastic bags and never buy or use another one. Be responsible and use something that you can carry with you, for many years, which will be as strong as your convictions when it comes to our environment.

Using whole tires as garden containers, actually helps keep your plants warm in the winter months, as they help keep the soil warm, and the therefore keeping frost away from the roots. You can also use whole tires to create swings for children. You should be able to find plenty of places and people who would be happy to give you their old useless tires for free.

Of course, there are only so many whole tires that you can place in your back garden, whether as garden containers or play swings, before it starts to look like some sort of army assault course! But there are others ways you can use recycled tires in your garden by using a sprinkler hose or rubber soil, which are both made from recycled tires.

There are recycled sprinkler hoses on the market, that are made from 65% recycled tires, that can be very efficient and environmentally friendly way to water your plants, with the pin holes running along their surface, dispersing water over your plants.

You may have heard on the grapevine that rubber mulch is bad for your plants and soil, but let me tell you now that most plants actually benefit from zinc, and the small amounts of chemicals in rubber soils, are mainly removed in the process of creating it, so there are literally no chemicals left to leech into the soil and kill your plants, as the naysayers would have you believe.

If you are worried about your more ‘delicate’ plants, then you can consider using rubber mulch as borders around your trees and shrubs, or as garden borders to give an extra dimension and color to your garden, but talking to a rubber mulch expert should also put your mind at rest – you can find some experts right here: http://www.rubbermulch.com

When you look out your child, and think that they are looking too pale from sitting inside and playing whatever game is flavor of the month on their console, then it’s time to get them outside and teach them about gardening and recycling, with the help of your newly installed rubber soil!

Encouraging your child to participate in some gardening is as simple as giving them a few seeds, some gardening tools made for children a little plot of land, and a watering can! It is best to go out first of all on a sunny day, as until you have shown you child the merits of gardening, they are likely to go back inside and get back on their games consoles.

Once have marked out a plot of land for you child, used some nice colorful rubber mulch to create a border for it, put a sign in the garden plot with their name on it. Tell them how this rubber mulch was made, and that they are helping the environment by having it in their plot of land. Say that if the tire used for creating that rubber mulch was discarded instead of recycled, what damage it could do to the environment.

Create a little game for you child by saying they have to look after this little plot, as if their lives depended on it (as their instructions for their game on the games console would tell them), and then when they check back everyday they will have the satisfaction of seeing their plants grow and flower.

Once they have done this, you can progress them to growing vegetables. Teach them about the importance of organic food, and much nicer their meals will taste knowing that they have grown the vegetables themselves.

These gardening activities should definitely put some color back into their cheeks, and help your child appreciate the ‘real’ world and the environment.