Steven Feldman

You don’t see much green in the desert, save a cactus or some other type of flora not dependent on hydration. That is, except when Mohawk comes to town. At its recent Floorscapes convention in Desert Ridge, Ariz., it seemed wherever you looked you saw green.

Mohawk recognizes the environmental movement that initially gained steam in the commercial segment is taking hold with the residential consumer. The sentiment goes something like this: “If I’m helping the planet and not paying a lot more, why not?”

For Mohawk, it starts with its Family Living grouping of polyester carpet. There consumers will find its EverStrand and SmartStrand fibers. EverStrand is made using PET that is extruded from recycled plastic bottles and contains 100% post-consumer recycled content. In fact, Mohawk is the largest recycler of plastic bottles in North America—one of every four recycled bottles on the continent is turned into carpet.

By the way, Mohawk doesn’t stop with the bottles. Caps and labels are recycled into carpet cores around which the carpet is wrapped. These are reused over and over again, unlike cardboard cores that would typically be discarded.

Then there’s SmartStrand with DuPont Sorona renewably sourced polymer. This carpet exclusively offers fiber made with Bio-PDO, which is produced from corn sugar. What does that mean? The production of Sorona polymer requires 30% less energy than the production of an equal amount of nylon.

Mohawk realizes it’s not enough to just be environmental stewards; the company understands it must convey the message to consumers. To that end, it added digital screens to its triangular kiosk to drive consumers to the Family Living “boutique.” The enhanced kiosk aids in greater message recall and now tells a more detailed SmartStrand and EverStrand story.

Moving over to Main Street commercial, Mohawk was showcasing its first modular carpet tiles housed in the Aladdin Home & Office collection. The story here is the Encycle backing, which can be completely recycled back into itself in a single process without having to separate the face fiber from the backing, thus saving energy. As well, Encycle contains 35% pre-consumer recycled content.

What about cushion? Mohawk at Floorscapes was touting its Rebond cushion. As much as 200 million pounds of manufacturing waste products are recycled each year to make Rebond. About 90% of the cushion comes from materials diverted from the landfill, and the same can be said for its synthetic cushion.

On the hard surface side, 97% of Mohawk’s ceramic SKUs contain some recycled waste byproducts from internal and external manufacturing processes. Currently the recycled material makeup is 45% to 64% in floor tile.

I could go on and on. Log on to greenworksblog.com and you’ll find out a whole lot more.