By Jeff West
Every year, approximately five billion pounds of carpet is sent to landfills. This is due in no small part to the “take – make – use – waste” system traditionally employed by manufacturers. Consumption that leads to waste leaves potential raw materials and embodied energy trapped in landfills across America. Many questions exist: Can we change? How do we change? Will quality suffer? Most importantly, how much will it cost?
In many ways, the carpet industry can be viewed as an innovator, embracing an environmental consciousness well ahead of the curve. Collectively, we have come a very long way in a relatively short time (
FCNews, June 18). As manufacturers continue to tell unique environmental stories that all seek similar goals, several key points are commonly sought throughout the industry.
First and foremost, a carpet product must be safe for human interaction. Design consulting firms like McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry work to ensure that products are healthy and safe for humans and the environment. The product must also contain recycled material and be easily recyclable so it disassembles without adding unnecessary materials. Lastly, the product must perform as well or better than other products in the category, without an added cost. Carpet manufacturers are showing that “green” broadloom products can outperform traditional carpet products—a phenomenon currently taking place across the carpet industry.
A key step in building products that make a strong environmental statement is an investment in the product design process, particularly in technology to convert waste back into usable raw materials. Carpet manufacturers continue to seek means to infuse recycled content into the production stream. Post-industrial content such as selvedge and other waste from the mill floor is frequently used as recycled content. Some manufacturers, Mohawk and Beaulieu, for example, are using materials such as recycled soda bottles in production, reducing the amount of new raw materials being used to make fiber or backing.
When a carpet product is designed for deconstruction and reuse, it requires a commitment to future generations of the product. If carpet designers are equipped with the building blocks to create carpet that is cradle-to-cradle, or completely recyclable, they are free to explore design with very few limitations. This foundation leads to sustainable products that will create future generations of carpet.
The final step is developing the necessary method to allow end users to take advantage of a product’s recyclability. Carpet is not like soda cans and newspapers that are picked up weekly from your driveway, so manufacturers like Shaw are assembling national carpet recycling networks, so that broadloom can be kept from the landfill and used again. The collectors within Shaw’s network, for example, are located within 50 miles of over 40% of the U.S. population, meaning that carpet recycling is currently open to many, with more collectors regularly coming online. (Editor’s note: In addition to companies like Shaw establishing national collection networks, the industry’s collaborative Carpet America Recovery Effort (
CARE) has helped establish and coordinate collection efforts across North America. In addition to working closely with the
StarNet Flooring Cooperative, over 50 reclamation centers were in existence at the end of 2006 with the number constantly growing.)
As old carpet is pulled from floors to be replaced by new, it can be picked up by an affiliated collector and taken to their processing center rather than to a local landfill. In the case of carpet made from nylon 6, it is depolymerized to create caprolactam, the basic building block used to make new nylon 6 fiber. Caprolactam is used to produce new nylon that is indistinguishable from nylon 6 made from virgin polymers.
All that being said, old carpet that is cradle-to-cradle becomes beautiful new carpet again. Fewer raw materials are used, and waste is kept from the landfill.
This is a great start, but there is much more to do. For example, Shaw’s collection network will recycle over 300 million pounds of carpet this year, enough to stretch a 12-foot band of carpet from New York to London to Paris and back again. Because this number represents only about 7% of the broadloom currently going to the landfill, other solutions are needed to keep used carpet from the dump.
Cradle-to-cradle recyclability represents a giant step forward, a realistic approach that eliminates the concept of take – make – use – waste by turning the waste into the genesis for the next generation of carpet—and the next, and the next, and the next…
Jeff West is the director of commercial environmental affairs for
Shaw Industries. To contact him, call 770.607.2514.
