Recycle, Recover, Reuse Carpet: Werner Braun

Werner Braun: Recycle, Recover, Reuse, or “Green is the New Black” for carpet

Werner Braun continues his series of columns in Dalton’s Daily Citizen-News with an article on a subject about which the carpet industry has significant reason for pride: its accomplishments in environmental responsibility. The article, published June 18, 2010, is titled "Recycle, recover, reuse."

CRI’s most recent Sustainability Report showed that in the five years between 2003 and 2008, the carpet industry scaled back its energy use and incorporated sustainable manufacturing processes to a remarkable extent. Furthermore, the industry made great strides in finding ways to recycle materials throughout the manufacturing process. The article points out that:

“The industry has already found numerous creative uses for carpet by-products, such as carpet trim and yarn scraps, to avoid the use of local landfills. Fiber and yarn that cannot be reused in manufacturing is recovered for use in other products, including excess carpet which is cut into rugs and mats and sold for other uses.

Waste carpet trimmings, backing and yarn are often sold to recycling plants and processed into such items as carpet cushion and furniture battings and cushions. Additional carpet waste is used for reinforcing filler for concrete, fence posts, road underlayment, plastic lumber and automotive parts.

Then there is polyethylene packaging, which is used to wrap carpet yarn spools and other raw materials. It is recycled into plastic pellets and sold to extruders of film, plastic wrap or plastic trash bags, or it is used in molded items.

Other materials used in the manufacturing process, such as cardboard, paper, aluminum, wooden pallets, yarn cones, roll cores, liquid containers, raw material packaging and scrap metal, are either reused or recycled.”

Material that is recycled during the manufacturing process is called “post-industrial”. Products and materials that are recovered from consumers and recycled is called, fittingly enough, “post-consumer”. The column mentions how today, more and more carpet is being collected after it has served its useful purpose, but before it goes to the landfill. Thus diverted, it is being put to good use in other products.

“Carpet manufacturers are voluntarily addressing this problem through a number of ways: recycling old carpet materials back into carpet production, recycling old carpet into alternative uses such as building materials and auto parts, or by refurbishing old carpet into new carpet tiles. Several businesses are even reclaiming their old carpet so it can be reused or recycled.

Many of our member companies also have programs to deal with post-consumer carpet. Because collecting, sorting and transporting used carpet is such a huge challenge, the tasks are being addressed by carpet and fiber companies and individual entrepreneurs. Several companies have collection sites in place and are developing means to separate carpet components and recover polymers.

The industry is working towards recycling fiber back into fiber and turning Nylon 6 into new fiber. Some companies are refurbishing used carpet modules. Currently, billions of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic beverage bottles each year are used to make polyester carpet fibers.”

Finally, the article notes that one CRI committee developed an identification system of carpet materials that makes the sorting of fiber and backing compounds easier and more efficient in the future. Many CRI member companies and entrepreneurs around the country are currently using this identification system, called the Carpet Component Identification Code (CCIC).

Thank you, Werner, for pointing out how, with leadership from the carpet industry, “We are taking action today so we can take comfort in tomorrow.”

~Bethany