Carpet

Carpet Recovery Opportunities

Opportunities exist to gain value from carpet waste; much of which is readily recyclable. Nylon fiber, the most prominent type of carpet fiber, is a valuable polymer and can be used in many different applications. Recovered materials from waste carpet can be recycled into a variety of new products. According to the Carpet Assistance Recovery Effort (CARE) website, more than 1 billion pounds of carpet has been recycled since 2002.

The carpet recycling industry has become tremendously resourceful and is mindful of the value of their product and the immense opportunities it presents. There are a number of options for managing waste carpet: direct reuse, refurbishment, recycling fiber into other plastic products, recycling carpet backing into new carpet backing, and "carpet-to-carpet recycling."

News & Events

• Letter from Maine legislator Melissa Walsh Innes and 47 other Legislators from across the United States including California Assemblymember Julia Brownley asking the Carpet and Rug Institute to support  state carpet stewardship legislation and support higher recycling goals in the national Memorandum of Understanding that have sustainable funding sources. 5/25/11
• California Carpet Stewardship —U.S. Green Building Council, Northern California Chapter 4/15/11
  Co-authored by Heidi Sanborn (CPSC) and Georgina Sikorski (CARE)
• The Carpet Recyclers Partners With KKW Trucking —Marketwire 1/12/11
• Flame-Retardant Chemical Linked to Lower Fertility —LA Times 1/27/10
• UK's Axion Recycles Carpet into Injection-Molded PP —European Plastics News 1/19/10
• Trials Achieve High Value Output from Polypropylene Recovery —Carpet Recycling UK 1/10

Policy & Legislation

State of California

• CPSC Comments on Carpet Stewardship Plan and Regulations 1/17/12
  
  
• AB 2398 - Carpet Product Stewardship, Approved 9/30/10
  AB 2398 is the first producer responsibility legislation for carpet passed in the U.S. This bill requires carpet manufacturers to submit a carpet stewardship plan to the Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery that must include such elements as a funding mechanism that covers carrying out the plan, including administrative and operational costs.
  
  
• Implementation of the Paint Stewardship Program in California:
  Video from California Assembly Hearing on EPR and Product Stewardship 3/8/11
  
  Speakers:
  Randy Pollock, Carpet America Recovery Effort
  Ron Greitzer, President, LA Fibers and Reliance Carpet Cushion
  Larry Fink , President, The Carpet Recyclers
  Note: This large file takes time to load!
  
  

What You Can Do To Help

The single most important thing you can do is to buy recycled content carpet and carpet pad! The carpet industry claims that there is too little demand for recycled product on the market so it’s very important that you “vote with your dollars” to create the “market pull” for carpet recycling to work. For more information on everything you want to know about these products and where to find them, go to the Department of General Services Website.

• NSF/ANSI Standard 140-2007 for Carpet
  
  
• California Gold Sustainable Carpet Standard 2006
  
  
• Tips from the EPA "A Guide for Federal Purchasers"
  

Sustainable Carpet Assessment Tools

The State of California is a leader in environmentally responsible carpet purchasing decisions that reduce waste, increase resource management, and safeguard human health. To address the growing problem of waste carpet, the California Gold Standard was created to assist in procurement guidelines and increase environmentally preferable purchasing.

• California Laws & Policies —California Dept. of General Services
• California Gold Sustainable Carpet Standard —California Dept. of General Services

A national rating system was developed to provide manufacturers with one consistent sustainable carpet assessment standard. NSF, the world leader in standards development, product certification, education, and risk-management for public health and safety and American National Standards Institute (ANSI), a respected third party certification program, worked with the state of California and other key stakeholder to develop the ANSI/NSF 140-2007 standard. The NSF 140-2007 has four levels of attainment (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) based on five key attributes:

1. Public Health and Environment
2. Energy and Energy Efficiency
3. Bio-based and Recycled Content
4. Manufacturing
5. Reclamation, Sustainable Reuse and End of Life Management

As of December, 2009, all state of California procurement purchases for new carpet must meet the NSF 140 Platinum rating. For more information on what these requirements entail and what carpet lines qualify:

• Sustainable Carpet Product Platforms
  

What Consumers and Business Can Do

Buy Recycled Carpet Pad and Carpet

Environmental Attributes to look for:

• Low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
• No toxic dyes
• Recyclable
• Recycled-content
• Reduced energy use (from manufacturing)
• Reduced or improved air emissions (from manufacturing)

Donate Gently Used Carpet

If your carpet is in good condition, consider donating it or replacing only part of it. Charities like Habitat for Humanity can be a good place to start.

Recycle Old Carpet

If your carpet must be replaced, make sure your installer is responsibly recycling your waste carpet or you may want to make arrangements with a reputable local recycling facility.

• Carpet and pad recycling facilities in California
  
  
• Tandus Flooring
  Tandus Flooring reclaims carpet from any manufacturer for recycling into new floor coverings in a closed loop recycling process, the first in the industry. Since the inception of this program, Tandus Flooring has kept more than 180 million pounds of carpet from being incinerated or landfilled. Anyone recycling carpet will receive a recycling certificate to verify how many pounds were recycled.

Resources

• CARE is the Carpet America Recovery Effort. The non-profit was created to oversee the goals and targets documented in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed on January 8, 2002 by the carpet industry, a number of states, the federal EPA and a small group of non-governmental organization (NGO's).
  
  
• Letter from CIWMB (now CalRecycle) to CARE stating “at this time we are unable to justify committing our time and resources towards a project that, in all these years, has been unable to develop a financing mechanism – a fundamental requirement for achieving the goals of higher recycling rates.” 1/26/10
  
  
• Map of Carpet Reclamation Partners

Links

• Manufacturer Recycling Programs:
  • Dupont-Mohawk: REcover
    
  • J + J/Invision: R4/EnAct
  • Mannington Mills: LOOP
  • Miliken: Ecountability/Earth Square
  • INVISTA: Antron Carpet Reclamation Program
  • Shaw: Green Edge
  • InterfaceFLOR ReEntry 2.0
    
    
• CARE
  California carpet producers participating in CARE:
  • Los Angeles Fibers
  • San Francisco Carpet Recycling
    
    
• Carpet Product Stewardship —U.S. EPA
  
  
• Carpet Recycling UK
  was formed as a not-for-profit association of companies from the carpet industry to take a lead in waste reduction by co-coordinating research and development, and it has now built up a significant knowledge base.
  
  
• INFORM Fact Sheet on Carpet Recycling
  
  
• The Carpet Recyclers
  This Company is a CPSC partner who recently opened two recycling locations in Oakland and La Mirada, creating 50 jobs in 2010.