WHAT IS PET FRIENDLY ARTIFICIAL GRASS?
Firstly there is a difference between “Pet Friendly” and “Made for Pets”
Pet friendly is pretty much all artificial grass – why? because against real grass and other landscape options, artificial grass does not stain (real grass goes yellow and even dies). And because artificial grass is porous and has a drainage system, any liquids go through the product. Artificial grass is also soft on paws and when you compare to hard landscape alternatives such as stones, gravel etc (which can even damage pets paws) you can see that dogs and cats love to play, walk and run on artificial grass. In addition, it also gives the pet owner an easier life because you don’t have bald spots in your lawn anymore, no more mud pools, no more dirty paws and it’s easy to clean. So this goes for nearly all artificial grasses, it is “Pet Friendly”.
Made for pets
Now to, how we call it: “Made for Pets”.
Regular artificial grass is made with latex to bond the backing. Two problems with this:
1) Some dogs can be allergic to latex and can get a reaction. Not too great of a risk but still a concern for dog owners.
2) Pets like to urinate in the same places. With a regular artificial grass, this means over time an area of latex will break down and disintegrate. One problem with this is pile retention, the pile will easily come out when the latex has disintegrated. It will also start to smell when the latex gets more and more absorbed with urine.
Made for Pets (for example our powder or dispersion backings) use no latex and is totally synthetic. Therefore the product will not break down, the pile will be retained and the smell will be less (still needs to be washed regularly). Also without the latex the issue there is less risk of an allergic reaction. So this makes the product “Made for Pets”. As a smaller detail – the pile of the grass should not be with a shape extrusion (C, W or V shape) as this will give a spikey feeling on the paws.
100% recyclable
A nice side benefit is that all our ‘made for pets’ grasses are under the NEXTGEN label which means that they are 100% recyclable and have a reduced CO2 footprint by 55% in comparison with regular artificial grass. This is due to our NEXTGEN backing which is a polypropylene dispersion that avoids the usage of latex and therefor ideal for the lawn of pet owners.
Check out our grasses that are made for pets: