The carpet industry is working together, seeking cost-effective and efficient ways to divert carpet from landfills.

The carpet industry has a long and credible track record of being in the forefront among industries in dealing with environmental issues and meeting challenges head-on.

For years, carpet has been taking up substantial amounts of landfills across the country. When a small group of Midwestern states convened in the late 1990s to address the issue, the carpet industry itself was where the group turned to in search of guidance.

The industry and the government worked for nearly two years to craft an agreement encouraging product stewardship — meaning that carpet manufacturers would assume responsibility for carpet throughout its life cycle — from design to disposal. A new industry was formed, and thus began the carpet industry’s newest and perhaps most challenging opportunity.

In January 2002, the carpet industry and government environmental representatives signed a groundbreaking agreement known as the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Carpet Stewardship. The voluntary agreement is the first of its kind in the country, and it aims to eliminate landfill disposal of used carpet through stewardship.

One of the problems encountered with recycling and re-use of carpet is the difficulty of doing so in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The carpet industry helped established a third-party organization known as the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) to help manufacturers, material suppliers, and local governments deal with this problem. CARE will work to establish collection systems for post-consumer carpet.

About 4.7 billion pounds of carpet is being discarded annually and that number will continue to rise. The carpet industry is working to change this. Photo by David Humber.

The MOU agreement creates the perfect motivational climate and multi-stakeholder partnerships that will help the industry reach our 40 percent diversion goal from landfills by the year 2012. Currently, about 4.7 billion pounds of carpet is being discarded annually and that number will continue to rise. In layman’s terms, that’s 13 trillion BTUs being discarded, or enough to power 106,000 homes a year. There are enough hydrocarbons being landfilled to produce 108 million gallons of gas, or enough to drive 2.7 billion miles annually. Carpet waste represents 2 percent of all annual landfill waste.

The goal is to get much of that carpet out of the landfills and continue to strive to recover the maximum possible value from used and spent carpet.

In the past two years, CARE has been busy laying a solid foundation for this exciting new industry. The amount of post-consumer carpet reported to be recycled increased from 46.2 to 86.6 million pounds from 2002 to 2003, an increase of 86 percent. Total diversion from landfills increased from 57.2 million pounds in 2002 to 93.7 million pounds in 2003, an increase of 64 percent.

Efforts are underway nationally to increase the options for recycling waste carpet, as well as using components to make new products containing post-consumer carpet content.

The clubhouse at Auburn University utilizes shingles made out of recycled post-consumer carpet.

There are a number of options for managing waste carpet: direct re-use, refurbishment, recycling fiber into other plastic products, recycling carpet backing into new carpet backing, and “carpet-to-carpet recycling.” In fact, CARE no longer refers to old carpet as waste, but rather as a source of renewable raw materials.

The carpet industry has devoted considerable time, effort, and finances into finding end uses for old carpet. All of the major manufacturers of carpet and face fiber have committed many resources toward developing processes for recycling post-consumer and post-industrial fiber.

As mentioned before, there is an estimated 4.7 billion pounds of old carpet going to the landfill today, and there is no way all of this material can go back into carpet. Thus, in addition to all carpet-related products, considerable effort is being focused on non-carpet products containing post-consumer and post-industrial materials derived from old carpets.

Carpet is being recycled into a variety of products these days, including synthetic hay bales and filters, nylon boards, roof shingles, composite railroad ties, and marine timbers among others. It is being recycled into carpet padding with one company in California processing seven million pounds of post-consumer carpet monthly.

It is being used in waste to energy applications and some of the product that can’t be used is being burned to fuel cement kilns. The journey ahead is still a long and challenging path, but the carpet industry is content to stay the course.

In an effort to foster market-based solutions for the recycling and re-use of post-consumer carpet, member companies saw the money they used to fund CARE’s operations spin off the organization’s second cycle of CARE grant recipients.

Three winners were chosen from a list of proposals submitted by companies and entrepreneurs and received grants totaling $103,250, bringing the total grants since CARE’s inception to just under $200,000. The companies awarded grants last year were Environmental Recovery & Consolidation Services (ERCS) in Massachusetts, NY Wa$teMatch and CarpetCycle LLC in New York, and Blue Ridge Recycling in North Carolina.

Currently, CARE is working diligently to find economical ways to sort, transport, and reprocess used carpet, recovering the highest value for the components without utilizing more resources than the value of the components. This process must balance efficiency, the economic value for each participant in the process, and an end product that does not use more raw materials and/or energy than the same product made with virgin materials.

CARE is working diligently to find economical ways to sort, transport, and reprocess used carpet, recovering the highest value for the components without utilizing more resources than the value of the components. Shown are some of the products made from recycled carpet.

We feel an entirely new industry is being born and, thanks to CARE and the responsibility of CRI member companies, a solid foundation is being put into place for this new industry based on sustainable design. Clearly, the key to success will be the creation of market demand for the innovative products.

More information on CARE can be secured at carpetrecovery.org.