I'm curious about it too, odor and what kind of footing it gives as I was considering using it on a path as a long lasting way of keeping the weeds off and the mud down. Also does it wash down in the rain easily or resist the float?

I think it's useful for playground areas, but is a horrible idea around plants.

Considering how much my annual 3-4 inch layer of leaf mulch (which I get free for the hauling from Arlington County) has done to improve the tilth of the nasty clay I started with nine years ago, and how hard I have had to work to extract the shreds of the PO's plastic "landscape cloth" from my beds, I would never put down this kind of barrier. Not only would it do nothing for your soil, I would worry about petroleum byproducts leaching into your land and how you would possibly remove this shredded stuff should you decide later that it was a mistake. Worse than removing landscape gravel -- at least that you can screen out with enough time and manual labor!

LynnT

Actually I was thinking of it for use on a path to keep growth and mud down without having to renew it every year, not as a mulch on a bed.

G'Day!
The loose stuff will look great for a while - and then be an irritant for decades to come. The shreds will, as with any other loose matterial, get scattered in to beds, work their way into the soil, and be like little rubbery rocks or roots, difficult to distingish from other stuff in the soil when dirty and making your soil less work able. You would be basically adding trash to your beds, and trash that is about as long lasting as broken glass bottles.

On the other hand, the big strips of shreds strongly melded together which come in a roll would be great for a path, as long as they don't fray. Neat, clean edges, lets water percolate down, and easy on the feet. Wish i had a few hundred foot of that myself!

Hint: as easily water washes down through the mat, so will fine silt rise up through it. Where your pach must go through a low spot, be sure to raise it up on a foundation of, say, a very coarse ceder mulch or some such. Otherwise, mud will float up onto its surface; while this stuff is wonderfully easy to clean by just hosing down where it is raised a bit, in low spots that will just wash mud up on the mat's surface. Perhaps sweeping when dry would be a better cleaning stratagy? Better if you can just avoid low spots so it can drain properly. "Scultping" the foundation, so the path is slightly raised in the center and drains to the sides like a properly constructed road, will also make cleaning a whale of a lot easier; it's a bit more work to put in that way, but you will save so much time and result in much finer looks if you do make that investment.

Similarly, if your gardens are raised a bit above the level of the path, be sure they are solidly edged, or soil will migrate onto and into the path, gumming up the holes.

- Happy gardening,
-vlad

Here's a discussion of this subject on the Organic Gardening forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: Recycled tire mulch - safety issues?