Carpet Industry Sustainability and Stewardship in Journal of Greenbuilding

Journal of Greenbuilding Publishes Article on Carpet Industry Sustainability and Stewardship by CRI Sustainability Manager Jeff Carrier.

Sustainability and environmental impact are subjects of significant importance to the carpet industry, which is one reason why the Carpet and Rug Institute values the insights and knowledge of Sustainability Manager Jeff Carrier.

Jeff is known around CRI as a pretty knowledgeable guy - a font of information on the environmental programs, processes, and certifications that comprise the assessment and evaluation of sustainability as it relates to carpet. To keep him humble, we tease him a little bit about his military-style haircut, a holdover from his former life in the army and as a police officer here in Dalton, Georgia.

Jeff’s latest accomplishment comes in the form of an article that appears in the current issue, Volume 4: Number 2: Spring 2009, of the Journal of Greenbuilding, a publication aimed at engineers and other professionals in residential and commercial construction. The article, titled, Connecting the Pieces – Carpet Industry Sustainability and Stewardship, is a comprehensive overview of the carpet industry’s role in environmental issues, from the 1950s, when CRI member Milliken & Company worked with the newly-established U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help establish water use standards for the carpet industry, to the release of CRI’s 2008 Sustainability Report outlining the carpet industry’s impressive environmental accomplishments. The article details how, over the years, the carpet industry has vastly reduced its environmental footprint, from reducing water and energy and limiting greenhouse gas emissions, to increasing the use of renewable energy and recycled materials.

In the article, Jeff notes that sustainability can be a patchwork process. One carpet manufacturer can perform well in one area, such as waste reduction, but only marginally in an area like water usage. He points out that the ANSI/NSF 140 2007e Carpet Sustainability Assessment Standard pulls the carpet industry’s disparate efforts together into one comprehensive initiative.

The most important point Jeff wants readers to take away from the 6,ooo-word article is that in terms of environmental leadership, the carpet industry is way out in front of other building product producers, as well as U.S. manufacturers overall. He offers as an example the number of carpet manufacturing facilities that are certified by the International Standards Organization’s ISO 14001 standards.

The ISO 14001 series of standards guides manufacturers in establishing Environmental Management Systems within their facilities. ISO 14001 registrations are not common in the world’s manufacturing, but are widespread within the carpet industry.

I urge you to read the entire article. It’s well-written, and it certainly helped me to “connect the pieces” about carpet sustainability.

The Journal of Greenbuilding is published by Richmond, Virginia-based College Publishing. Thanks to publisher Stephen Mosberg for providing a pdf of Jeff Carrier’s article to use on the CRI blog.

Congratulations, Jeff!

- Bethany

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