By Cary Woodfield

Increased efforts to recycle carpet have been making industry news for the last few years. These efforts include both ends of the supply chain.

1. Making carpet from recycled materials such as polyester from recycled soda pop bottles. For example, Mohawk recycles millions of empty plastic bottles every day that will become PET polyester carpet fibers.
2. Keeping carpet or carpet components out of landfills by recycling all of the carpet or more commonly shearing off the face yarns to be recycled.

Here is my take on these efforts. Any effort to recycle is better than nothing, as the purchaser of large quantities of carpet with locations globally I face a unique challenge. If I was installing carpet in my home town, county or state re-cycling would be easy. If I was pulling up re-cycle friendly carpet it would be much easier.

We are pulling up Nylon 6.6 commercial carpet with attached cushion backing that has been installed with direct glue all over the world. Try to find a re-cycler in Union Indiana, Zuni New Mexico, Aba Nigeria, Trujillo Peru or Apia Samoa

It is not very easy to pull up direct glue carpet in the size required by some re-cyclers, sometimes it lifts right up and other times it comes up in little tiny piece or chunks. There is very little yield from a commercial grade carpet even if you shave the face fiber off the back you do not get very much material to re-use. There is very little one can do with poly-urethane attached cushion.

One has to decide do I want to sacrifice longevity, reduce my life cycle expectations while increasing my total cost of ownership? Or do I move to products with higher re-cycled content and better re-cycle options but will need to be replaced more often costing me more money?

To me I am being more environmentally friendly if I use a product with less re-cycling options that will last over 20 years than if I select a carpet that will only last 5, 7 or 10 years. Let’s say I have a 20,000 square foot building, the first installation lasts 21 years vs. a carpet that only last 7 years. Buying a carpet that lasts longer means I buy less carpet, I use less energy, less labor, less transportation and I keep about 4500 yards of carpet out of the land fill or needing to be recycled, to me this is being true green.

The other thing to think about is if you buy a carpet that lasts 20 plus years what type of re-cycling options will we have in 2032 that do not even exist today. So buy carpet that cost a little more up front, is cheaper to maintain and doesn’t need to be re-cycled until 2032, to me that is being environmentally friendly

As an end user I see things different, I am the one writing the check for other people’s brilliant ideas. The biggest issue I have with any recycling program is the increased cost to re-cycle. I know some argue it is free or cheaper than putting it in the landfill, I disagree. I have actual real life estimates and the added costs I am talking about are:

• Additional costs to remove the glued down carpet as required by the re-cycler
• Additional costs to package or palletize the used carpet as required by the re-cycler
• Transportation fees to move the used carpet to a storage location until I have enough carpet to meet the re-cyclers quantity requirements
• Storage fees to store the used carpet until I have enough to carpet to meet the re-cyclers quantity requirements
• Shipping fees once I have enough used carpet to ship to the re-cyclers facility
• Re-cycling fees (there is a cement plant about 45 miles from my office that burns carpet for energy and uses the ash in the concrete mix. They charge $X.xx per lbs and most of their used carpet is shipped from California to Northern Utah. How much does that cost?)

Estimates I have received show these added costs range from $3.00 to $5.00 per square yard to recycle carpet. Don’t get me wrong, I want to recycle but I do not know as an end user how to justify it at this point of time. I will continue to research and explore option. I will continue to use carpet I can get 20 plus years out of so I avoid having to buy, replace and dispose of carpet every 5 to 10 years.