Playground Mulch – What is It?
To properly understand the term playground mulch, it helps to understand the mulch part first.
Oxford defines mulch as a material (such as decaying leaves, bark, or compost) spread around or over a plant to enrich or insulate the soil.
The Oxford definition refers to what is commonly known as wood mulch in a landscape setting.
The History of Mulch
Mulch has for many years been a popular playground safety surface sold due to the affordable cost and relatively high impact attenuation rating. Though impact attenuating is directly correlated to the layer depth of the product and surface coverage per ASTM standards for children playing on the playground.
More info can be found regarding fall height safety on the National Program For Playground Safety website.
New Innovations in Playground Mulch
As time has evolved so has mulch, going from exclusively being derived from a decaying array of bark and compost to new synthetic materials like glass and rubber sold by the cubic yard. Certified mulch is also a popluar new innovation that provides more traceability.
The Dangers of Rubber Tire Mulch
Rubber mulch, unfortunately, is often comprised of old recycled tires. These tires are laden with potential chemicals – including lead and those on the red list. Further, rubber tire mulch can leach off on clothing and skin and prove smelly over time.
Read about the history of rubber tire mulch here.
A New Non-Toxic Playground Mulch
With the advent of rubber mulch arose a question among some enterprising companies, could there be a better solution to ensure safety here? Could there be a non-toxic rubber mulch that offers the safety features of tire mulch without the toxicity, smell, and leaching of paint?
Enter Jelly Bean Rubber Mulch, a non-toxic playground mulch made of virgin rubber safety tile scraps.
The Jelly Bean playground mulch offers a top safety fall rating, is free of toxins and tires, does not smell much at all, and has no paint leaching to speak of.
Playground Mulch Use Cases
We get a lot of different product use request emails here at Jelly Bean. From dog parks to horse stables, clean non-toxic light durable well-designed Jelly Bean works best, and we’re proud to share that with customers looking to place an order, and those just browsing our website looking for reviews of the playground mulch.
For schools, churches, and parks with a yard that can be measured by length and width, it is easy to give a custom quote for how much Jelly Bean quantity you will need.
Order & Delivery
While distinct types of mulches will vary in terms of quantity needed, size of yard or space where the product will go, if it’s certified or not, and type of use – like walking paths or playground applications, they all typically can be sent via freight delivery to a storage yard, playground directly, or warehouse.
Review The Fine Print
Before taking delivery there are some guidelines to follow when it comes to ordering playground mulch.
When looking at ordering mulch make sure, before checking out of your cart, to understand the depth you will need for the playground, cubic yard information, and if you will need extra playground mulch for walking paths or other designed features.
Cubic yards are the measurement most commonly associated with accounting for how much bulk playground mulch one will need before it is sold and written up as a bill of sale.
The cubic yard according to meriam-webster is a unit of volume equal to a cube one yard long on each side.
An Example of Fall Height Playground Mulch Needed By Cubic Yard
Let’s say you had a play structure with a maximum height of seven feet. The loose-fill playground mulch safety surface would be more than ASTM-certified at 10 inches of depth.
Let’s say the playground was small, at 20 ft by 10 ft wide.
You can see by our simple example you will need a little over 6 cubic yards of product.
Hopefully, this article will help you in your search for playground safety surfacing.