by Shane Henson — May 4, 2012—Even the most sustainably minded facilities managers and building owners may overlook materials that can and should be recycled, including material they walk on every day—carpeting. As a result, says CarpetCycle, an innovator in post-consumer recycling solutions, there are currently more than 135 million tons of building-related construction and demolition debris and four billion tons of carpet entering the waste stream each year in the United States alone.
To ensure sustainable building comes full circle, CarpetCycle provides the industry with opportunities to safely remove, collect, tear out and recycle carpet to reduce the material’s harmful impact on landfills. According to the company, in 2011 alone, it collected and diverted more than 12-million pounds of used carpet and two million pounds of old ceiling tiles from landfills—a process that, if adopted as a nationwide standard, could conserve more than 4.4 trillion BTUs (British thermal units) of energy.
To better recycle carpet, CarpetCycle says it uses an innovative shearing technology that achieves 99 percent nylon purity. Housed at the company’s new facility in Newark, New Jersey, this technology gives carpet a second life to enable post-residential and post-commercial flooring to be safely recycled or reused as diverse end-use products, including new carpet yarns and even auto parts.
Prior to this process, however, CarpetCycle makes significant advances to ensure the reclamation process is easy and cost-effective for its commercial customers, with services including:
- Commercial and residential pick-up services, allowing end-users to remove 6,000 to 9,000 square yards of post-consumer carpet per visit with a CarpetCycle collection trailer. This reclamation service includes trainer rental, transportation, insurance and processing costs.
- Rip-up contracting to safely remove existing floors and prepare surfaces for re-installation. While CarpetCycle does not install flooring, it has built a strong reputation as a leading flooring removal and surface preparation company, with the ability to remove carpet, carpet-tile, vinyl composition tile (VCT), and ceramic flooring.
Once post-consumer carpet is returned to the facility, it is sorted by face fiber and backing type, including Nylon 66, Nylon 6 and polypropylene, before it is processed in CarpetCycle’s innovative separation system.
By partnering with CarpetCycle, customers not only take the right steps toward sustainability; they can also qualify for U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) credits in the Materials & Resources, Construction Waste Management and Construction Waste Management categories, says CarpetCycle. This, combined with significant cost savings, provides a valuable, “evergreen” resource for the building industry, adds the company.
