Recycling Carpets and Rugs

Over 5 million homes replace their carpet each year. Carpet provides added warmth to save energy, protects your flooring, decreases air pollution, as well as increasing the value of your home.

We all like the feel of soft carpet under our feet. It is a feeling of comfort, warmth and luxury. But next time you rip up your old rugs to lay down new carpet, spare a thought for the fate of your old floor covering.

Most used carpet ends up in a landfill. While it represents less than 3 percent of the overall volume of waste landfilled each year, more than 4.5 billion pounds of carpet were thrown away in the United States in 2004 alone, according to estimates from the Dalton, Ga.-based Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI).

Given the growing scarcity of landfill space and the recognition that recycling and sustainable manufacturing processes can actually make business as well as environmental sense, a large number of carpet manufacturers signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Carpet Stewardship (MOU) in 2002. Its main goal is lofty - a landfill diversion rate of 40 percent by 2012. This target is viewed as a step towards a continuing commitment by the carpet industry for the eventual eradication of not only disposal in a landfill, but also incineration and incineration with energy recovery (waste-to-energy) of waste carpet.

Wilmington, Deleware, operates the oldest planned carpet recycling program, accepting carpet regardless of fiber type, manufacturer or backing type. Post-consumer carpet products recycled include carpet cushion, automotive parts, natural turf-based roofing tiles, furniture, pallets, filtration pipes and boards.

A number of companies - such as Interface Inc., Atlanta; and Milliken Carpet, LaGrange, Ga. - have reuse programs. They take back old carpet tiles, and clean and refurbish them, even adding new color and patterns. But reuse accounts for only a minuscule portion of carpet diverted from landfills.

Recycling of material is much more significant, and most carpet manufacturers now comprise recycled content in their carpet ranges, especially in the backing polymers. C&A takes polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-backed carpet and recycles it into backing for new carpet. 10 million pounds of carpet per year are recycled this way. PVC recycling is economically viable. Currently, it is cheaper to make a tile with recycled PVC than to use virgin material.

Manufacturers also are beginning to consider recycling in the design of their carpets. Dalton, Ga.-based Shaw Industry Inc.'s EcoWorx® polyethylene backing - just one end product produced from its many recycling and sustainability efforts - is calculated specifically for easy recycling. The company also has a cradle-to-cradle design protocol to assess each individual material used in its merchandise to determine whether it is safe for the ecosystem.

One company in Houston, is developing railroad ties that integrate carpet materials. The novel composite tie is made of a proprietary mixture of plastics, rubber from recycled tires, waste materials, chemical additives and various fillers and reinforcement agents. In extensive field tests, they have proven to be superior to wooden crossties, lasting up to 50 years. They also are fully recyclable at the end of their useful life. This would eliminate the use of creosote - a human carcinogen - as a preservative. Old carpet also may find its way into plastic lumber or specialty products such as drain sediment filters, which outlast natural hay.

And surprise, research suggests carpet is a better fuel than brown coal. Carpet is highly efficient and perfect for refuse-derived fuel. It could be collected with other high-calorific waste sources to fabricate refuse-derived fuel (RDF) - waste to energy. Once the RDF infrastructure is in place, it may then be possible to look at sorting out materials from this waste stream for chemical or other recycling. The RDF solution is best for those products made 10 years ago, when nobody thought about designing carpets for easy recycling.

So consider recycling your worn out carpet instead of taking it to the landfill.