Carpet Recycling 101

Not a day goes by that we don't get a call, email, or now Tweets asking us questions about carpet recycling. People are fascinated by it in ways that continues to surprise us. So we decided it was time to write a blog about it.

We should start by telling you that almost every ounce of carpet is made of plastic. That's right - the fibers you walk on are plastic! Very rarely do we run across carpet without plastic fiber. Care to guess non-plastic fiber type? Wool.

Here are the steps we perform to recycle carpet:

1. Collect it. This used to be more difficult than you can imagine because the carpet needed to be kept clean and dry due to the technology that is used to identify fiber type. Now with much better equipment we use open top dumpsters and customers can mix their carpet scrap with other waste materials.
2. Separate it from other materials. Most of the time our customers do NOT separate their carpet waste by type nor do they keep the carpet separate from other debris. And this is ok with us. When we get the loads, first we use an excavator to pick up debris and feed it into our conveyor system. Carpet ends up on our main sort line where workers drop all carpet and pad into a bin separate from other materials.
3. Spread and Sort. We then use a loader to move the carpet from the bin to a place on our plant floor where we can spread it out and access each and every piece. We then use a hand held computerized identifier than analyzes the fiber from each carpet roll or tile. Once we know what it is, we create piles for each grade.
4. Package it up. After we have piles with sufficient volumes of each type of carpet or pad, we then package the materials as required by our customers. Typically broadloom (rolled) carpet is baled so that each bale weighs in excess of 1000 lbs. Carpet tile is usually stacked on pallets and then wrapped in plastic. Its important that we examine each piece as we package to make sure no contamination, such as wood or non-recyclable carpet, makes it into the finished product. Currently we separate carpet into 10 different grades!
5. Store, Market & Ship. We keep at least 40,000 lbs of each grade on hand before shipping. Markets for us are as far away as central China, Europe, and South America. Customers for this material want us to ship as much as possible on a load to lower their overall cost.

What happens to the carpet next? Stay tuned for future posts.