One of the quickest ways to appreciate how pervasive fossil chemicals are is to look around your home.
Whether in your living room or your bathroom, almost everything you can see contains chemicals made from petroleum.
Room by room, we reveal the petrochemicals hidden inside the modern home, as well as the more sustainable materials that can replace them.
The living room: curtains, flooring, soft textiles
In the 19th century, heavy metals like arsenic and lead were common inside children’s toys, cookware, home decorations, and everyday medicines.
Today, we baulk at the idea that toxic materials were so common. Yet in the future, people may look back on our own fossil-based culture with the same shock.
Homes should be safe spaces of comfort, family, and rest. Yet they are filled with materials that are driving climate change and ecological destruction – forces threatening to undermine quality of life for generations to come.
Some of the best examples of hidden petrochemicals are in the living room. Carpets, curtains, and upholstery are probably the last things you associate with greenhouse gases. Yet these soft furnishings rely heavily on products of the petroleum industry.
First are the actual fibres that make up these fabrics. 90% of textile floor coverings are made from fossil-based polymer materials, like polyamide, polyester, and polypropylene. In fact, almost every soft surface you touch in the home is likely to contain plastic fibres – the most common materials used in global textile production.
On top of plastic fibres, the invisible coatings that make these interior fabrics fire-retardant are also eco-toxic. Once flame-retardant substances get into the ecosystem and the food chain, they can have devastating health effects, including cancer, hormonal disruption, and neurological abnormalities.
Floor textiles made from natural materials, like jute, are just as likely to be coated with these chemicals as plastic fibre carpeting. This is why making textiles from plant matter is not enough. We also need bio-based additives that offer the safety properties that petrochemical versions do.
Bio-based flame retardants are an emerging category in the biochemicals industry. Devan Chemicals supplies a majority-bio-based textile flame retardant for the cotton textiles market. It launched the product in 2020 and it is certified to be at least 85% bio-based.
Novel fire retardant bio chemicals are under development all the time as concerns about the ecological and health impacts of flame retardants increase. Researchers from Finland’s Aalto University and XAMK have developed majority- bio-based fire retardant chemicals. They say that their chemicals work even better than the commercial chemicals on the market today.
The product could be on the market soon, as the project is applying for business funding from the Finnish government.
The bedroom: linen, mattresses
Bed linens are awash in plastic too, with polyester and polycotton duvet covers dominating the market.
These plastic fibres are, most likely, not recycled: just 0.3 % of materials used in the global textile industry are. Aside from the carbon emissions needed to make them, these fossil-based linens shed toxic microplastics into the water supply at each wash cycle.
Natural linen options like cotton come with their own environmental drawbacks, requiring water and chemicals-intensive cultivation.
There are emerging solutions, however, Tencel is a promising textile material made from wood pulp. When the wood is sustainably sourced and harvested, this material can trump cotton or poly-blends on multiple environmental metrics, including greenhouse gas emissions. It is also biodegradable.
Mattresses are another petrochemical hotspot in the bedroom. Most mattress foam on the market is made from the fossil polymer polyurethane, racking up its emissions count.
This is also a highly linear industry, where components and raw materials simply get thrown away, wasting resources in the process.
Currently, mattresses have an average product life of ten years. In 2017, the vast majority of the UK’s 7 million discarded mattresses went straight to landfill. Once discarded, these products become environmental toxins thanks to the adhesives and fire retardant chemical coatings inside them.
Recycled mattresses are few and far between, but some companies are making headway. BASF is currently partnering with NEVEON to develop ways of making new mattresses out of old ones. Using old mattresses, BASF has successfully made polyols, an input for making polyurethane foam. NEVEON turns these into mattress foam with 80% recycled polyol.
Naturalmat is one of the rare small to medium-sized companies creating ecological mattresses designed for a lighter impact on the environment. Based in Devon, they make mattresses, toppers, and bedding using materials that are either biodegradable or recyclable.
In Europe, efforts to establish a more circular mattress industry are gathering pace. The European Waste Management Association is running the “Sleep Circular” project, an initiative that aims to raise mattress recycling rates from 20% to 80% in the EU. In 2025, the group called for partners to help set up a circular value chain in the product.
Bathroom: vinyl flooring
Bathrooms are another area of the home where petrochemicals are pervasive. Think shower curtains and acrylic bath tubs, not to mention the chemical agents lurking inside most of your cosmetic products.
Petroleum-based materials are so popular for bathroom interiors because they offer cheap water-resistance. One example are the PVC vinyl linings that cover most bathroom floors. PVC is not only waterproof, it’s also highly flexible and ideal for use as a lining material. Its rubber-like texture also offers anti-slip function.
Flooring company Tarkett has developed iQ Natural, a flooring material made with bio-attributed vinyl, Biovyntm. Biocyntym is made from wood residue.
Tarkett says the material offers 60% greenhouse gas emissions reductions compared to other flooring solutions. The company has whole supply chain certification from the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials.
British company Amtico makes a similar product: a bio-attributed vinyl tile made from paper pulp.
Bio-based PVC can have a drastically lower carbon footprint compared to petroleum-based PVC. Yet whatever kind of feedstock it comes from. PVC is not safely biodegradable in nature.
Moreover, PVC manufacturing uses various petrochemical additives to achieve different properties, like flame resistance. Both PVC resin and the chemical additives they contain are toxic to wildlife.
Making the PVC supply chain more sustainable going forwards must involve two things. First, ensuring enough recycling capacity to process discarded material and divert them from landfill. Second, more sustainable additives are needed to limit the eco-toxicity of these linings.
The kitchen: paint
Kitchens are among the most popular rooms for home renovation. One of the easiest ways to update a space is to give the walls a new lick of color.
Here again, petrochemicals are almost unavoidable. Nearly all paints on the market are based on fossil raw materials. Petrochemicals usually make up all the components within the paint, including binders, thickeners, pigments, solvents, and additives.
This chemical cocktail is notorious for causing health side effects. As paint dries, the vapours that get released contain volatile organic compounds that can trigger nausea and allergies.
Historically, natural ingredients like shellac, oriental lacquers, and vegetable oils went into making paint. Today, some manufacturers are returning to natural materials, modifying them to hit modern performance standards.
Elementis’ bio-based polyurethane thickener is made mostly from waste sugarcane. Being made from renewable sources rather than fossil sources can make for a pot of paint with a smaller carbon footprint. The company says that their product is also free of the volatile organic compounds that aggravate respiratory problems and allergies when the paint dries.
Binders are an important part of the paint mixture, determining how well the pigment can coat and stick to different surfaces and how durable it is. Lumiforte’s bio-based paints use a modified starch as a binder to replace petroleum versions, a choice guided by the low cost and availability of the material.
Major chemical companies are continually expanding their renewable chemicals portfolio too. In the process, they are scaling the basic supply chains that paint manufacturers need to produce bio-based paints at scale.
Cargill is famous for being a global agribusiness but it is expanding into bio-based chemicals. It now sells a wide range of renewable paint chemicals, including bio-based solvents, additives, and binders.
A bio-based future?
The dominance of petrochemicals reflects their incredible versatility. Over decades, industry has squeezed an impressive variety of functions out of petroleum. This is a feedstock that can become soft fibres or hard surfaces, high-sheen coatings or flame-retardant chemicals.
Yet historians of the future may justifiably ask why early 21st century homes were so full of toxic materials that were driving planetary destruction. The question would be especially pertinent because we already have more sustainable alternatives at hand.
Today, many bio-based and circular materials have caught up with fossil-based chemicals on performance. Advances in renewable materials mean a more sustainable home is now possible – one that is just as functional and durable as the ones we are used to.
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