The Carpet Industry’s Super-Sized Recycling Effort to Tighten the Loop Around America’s Landfills

Your assignment, should you accept it, is this: divert 1.6 billion pounds of used carpeting from the landfills — enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome — in a period of less than 10 years by setting up a nationwide network of collection centers, and then building facilities to transform the worn carpeting into new carpeting, carpet padding, consumer products such as automobile parts, and alternative energy sources.

While few people, or even other industries, would want to take on such a challenge, the carpeting industry did just that in 2002. According to Georgina Sikorski, executive director of the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), the industry’s grand slam efforts have paid off even though recycling carpet is one of the most technically difficult products to recycle.

“Recycling carpets is a very complex process that requires separating the many different components,” Sikorski noted. “Those components include the face fibers, primary backing and latex. We then harvest the most valuable part, the fiber, into new carpet. The remaining usable parts of the carpet are then used for carpet backing and engineered resins used to make auto parts and other consumer products.”

For plush carpet — the type found in most homes — up to 40 percent of the carpet fiber and backing can be recycled into new carpet, carpet padding, or pellets used to make plastic consumer products. For carpet tiles, found mostly at commercial properties, the number shoots up to a full 100 percent, since all of the carpet tile can be shredded and reused for new carpet tiles.

So what does that mean to the building owner or operator who is having a difficult enough time just making sure that collection companies come on schedule to pick up the blue bins filled with cans, bottles and newspapers from building tenants — not to mention the myriad of other responsibilities of a facilities operator or manager?

If recycling is now mandatory in your area of the country, the answer to that question is simple: you have no choice but to recycle used carpeting, light bulbs, and other debris that results from building operations and renovations. In areas where recycling may not yet be mandatory, most forward-thinking organizations choose to recycle anyway — either out of a desire to be good corporate citizens, or to lessen pressure from politicians, community and business leaders.

Most building owners and operators have seen a marked shift in recent years in attitudes toward recycling programs. What was once seen as a nice way to recycle soda bottles has now become an industry in itself. As pressure mounted from community and business leaders, and the public, to “reduce, reuse and recycle” hundreds of millions of tons of waste generated from building related construction, remodeling and demolition activities, the recycling efforts of American industry, including the carpet industry, have escalated proportionally.

Evergreen: “The Most Technologically Advanced and Innovative Carpet Recycling Operation in the World”

Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is one of several carpeting companies — including Milliken, Armstrong Industries, and Mohawk — who, as one senior university facilities planner put it, “don’t just talk about recycling, they act on what they say.” In the past several years these and other companies have set up collection sites across the country where partner dealers and installers drop off their used carpeting. The used carpeting is then segregated into various carpet components and the parts are reprocessed to be used in new carpet, carpet padding and consumer products like automobile parts.

While the overall effort of the carpeting industry is commendable, one Shaw plant in particular stands out among many others the industry has established: the Evergreen Nylon 6 recycling operation in Augusta, Georgia. “Evergreen is the most technologically advanced and innovative carpet recycling facility in the world,” said David Wilkerson, corporate director of sustainability for Shaw.

A forklift operator at the Evergreen facility’s warehouse.

The Evergreen Plant takes post-consumer Nylon 6 carpet, segregates the nylon fiber, then depolymerizes it back to its original starting material, caprolactam, the building block for Nylon 6. The caprolactam from Evergreen is then mixed with virgin caprolactam and polymerized to produce more nylon fiber which is used to produce new carpeting. “Type 6 nylon is particularly valuable for recycling,” Wilkerson said. “In fact, re-processed Type 6 fiber from Evergreen can’t be distinguished from virgin fiber and may be recycled into new carpet repeatedly without losing any aesthetic or performance properties.”

He added: “One of our goals is to keep carpet out of the landfill once it has reached the end of its useful life. We also want to use the petroleum based raw materials over and over — and make sure we use them in a safe and cost-effective manner.”

What about other types of fiber? One viable option involves taking carpet made from a second type of nylon — Type 6,6 — and “sheering” the fiber from the face of the carpet. The fiber then goes through an extensive cleansing process before being converted into pellets. These pellets are used in the engineered resin market to produce various types of plastic auto parts and other consumer products. “The remaining carcass’ may be utilized as an alternative energy source to power one of Shaw’s carpet manufacturing operations,” Wilkerson said.

The remaining carcass’ — what is left after a used carpet has been broken down into its recyclable components — is used as an alternative energy source to power one of Shaw’s carpet-manufacturing operations

“While shearing provides another proven method for keeping post consumer carpet fiber out of landfills,” Wilkerson said, “our new alternative energy plant in Dalton called Re2E introduces an innovative and efficient option for utilizing the embodied energy in materials that would otherwise be buried in landfills. This unique plant also reduces our dependence on traditional fossil fuels.”

Not All Recyclers Are the Same

Carpet collection centers have been set up throughout the country, mostly in urban areas. One of the largest collection centers, CarpetCycle in Elizabeth, New Jersey, collects and recycles 12 million pounds of discarded carpeting from offices and other commercial buildings in New Jersey and New York. Sean Ragiel, president of CarpetCycle and a board member of CARE, isn’t your average recycler. After graduating with degrees in biology and environmental science from Carnegie Mellon, Ragiel started working for recyclers in New York City and saw the opportunity to start his own business focusing on carpet recycling.

“We bid on jobs competitively just like demolition companies would,” Ragiel said. He noted that the value of the recycled material alone “can’t support the front end costs” of trucks, manpower and other collection expenses. Upon winning a competitive bid on a job, “we go in and do the dirty work, so the building owner doesn’t have to worry about the demo and recycling of the carpet.” In addition to doing that work at competitive prices, CarpetCycle ensures that the new carpet installation “can take place over a clean floor.”

CarpetCycle provides a service that qualifies its customers for USGBC LEED points, including two points for recycling carpet, one point for diverting 50 percent or more from disposal, and an additional point for diverting more than 75 percent from disposal.

Ragiel takes his work as a recycler very seriously, so much so that he gives tours of the CarpetCycle facility to show customers and prospects the difficult process of carpet recycling, and to prove that his company is not one of the recycling vendors, who promise to recycle carpet but end up bringing the debris to the landfill. “It’s difficult to recycle carpet, so not everyone actually participates in the process the way they’re supposed to,” Ragiel said.

For companies worried that their recycled carpet might in reality end up in a landfill because of unscrupulous recycling contractors, Ragiel suggested asking three questions when choosing a recycling contractor: 1) Is the contractor a member of CARE? 2) Can the contractor provide recycling certification, and: 3) What does the prospective contractor do with the carpet after they collect it?

CarpetCycle’s efforts are paying off for both the environment and the company. Last year the company grossed $2.5 million and there are plans to expand CarpetCycle into a larger facility in New Jersey. Ragiel is currently in discussions with government and private entities to set up a 20,000-square-foot facility in New York City that would process carpet and also manufacture products from recycled nylon.

The Best Laid Plans for Carpet Recycling

“Carpet recycling is not a financially rewarding effort on the front end, but we know the used carpet has value, and we need to use it again and again in a cost-effective and viable method,” Sikorski noted. As a result, it takes leading manufacturers to “to make the necessary front-end investment.” But not all carpet manufacturers and contractors have been as diligent in their efforts as the industry leaders Milliken, Shaw, J+J Invision, Mohawk, InterfaceFlor and others, who partner with the Carpet America Recovery Effort.

In order to ensure there is greater recycling compliance, California — where the commercial sector diverts landfills approximately 68 percent of the waste disposed — recently worked with the carpet industry to enact AB 2398, a piece of legislation designed to increase the landfill diversion and recycling of post-consumer carpet generated in California.

The legislation includes assessments on manufacturers that are ultimately passed onto the consumer. Similar measures are being considered for other industries in California, as well by legislators in other states, who see the California initiative as a model for their states.

Designated as Re2E, or Reclaim-to-Energy, this facility will be totally fueled by reclaimed carpet materials from both internal manufacturing operations and post-consumer carpet collections.

“The initial proposal (for AN 2398) was not acceptable to the industry,” Sikorski noted. “An industry team met with legislators and worked to amend the legislation six times before it was finally passed.” Final legislation called for an assessment of five cents per square yard on the purchase price of all carpet sold in California. The “stewardship fee” was felt to be high enough to promote recycling without hurting carpet sales. Dealers and retailers must make the assessment visible on all invoices, and the assessment is used to implement a recycling plan developed under the current stewardship of the Carpet America Recovery Effort.

Tightening the Loop Around Landfills

According to Sikorski, CARE members diverted 311 million pounds of carpet from the landfill in 2009 alone, an increase of 19 million pounds versus 2008, a gain of six percent. “This is an amazing achievement, given that the economy was still in the doldrums in 2009,” Sikorski said.

So what new Superdome-sized recycling goals are looming for the carpeting industry in 2011 and beyond? “We are working closely with government representatives to help push procurement of products containing post-consumer carpet recycled content,” she added. “We also work with carpet industry manufacturers, who are continuing to improve and increase their consumption of used carpet, and representatives from the plastics industry, who are evaluating plastics pellets made from post-consumer carpet for a wide range of applications.”

And if that’s not enough, many of those plastic bottles that are in your facility’s blue recycling bins are being reprocessed and turned into carpet — making the carpet industry’s loop around the landfill even tighten.