Flooring Carpet creativity
The recycling of waste carpet and carpet tiles is a success story which FMs have everything to gain from taking part in. Laurance Bird, Director of Carpet Recycling UK (CRUK), explains what the year ahead holds for carpet recycling, following a positive 2012.
Now that the recycling of waste carpet and carpet tiles is a reality in the UK, FMs from a range of the UK’s largest organisations are taking an increased interest in greener disposal routes for flooring from refurbishment projects. Reuse and recycling reduces the environmental impact of this bulky waste stream and can help organisations enhance their Green Procurement policies and eco-credentials. It can also offer potential savings on disposal costs. At around £100 per tonne, sending carpet waste to landfill is an increasingly expensive business. Plus, there is growing demand from rising numbers of outlets that can find a useful second life for both uplifted carpet tiles, which can be cleaned and reused by third sector organisations, and installation offcuts that can be recycled back into new flooring products.
This is reflected in CRUK’s latest figures, which show diversion of carpet waste from landfill increased
to 21.4% in 2012 – a rise of 30% on the previous year’s rate. In 2012, 85,000 tonnes of waste carpet was reused, recycled or used for energy recovery. CRUK’s target is to achieve 25% landfill diversion by 2015. Of the 85,000 tonnes, the recycled and reused portion was 36,000 tonnes, while 49,000 tonnes were sent for energy recovery via cement kilns and power generation plants. Energy recovery grew by 44% or 15,000 tonnes as the high calorific value of carpets became more widely recognised and exploited. The amount of waste carpet recycled grew in 2012 by 12.5% or 4,000 tonnes as new outlets have developed and established ones have grown.
Social projects Opportunities are growing for re-use. Social enterprise and South Wales-based CRUK member, Greenstream Flooring, is collaborating with housing associations by collecting unwanted
carpet tiles from retail and corporate sources, which are then sorted and offered for resale as low cost flooring. Re-use for social benefit enables this service to be accessed by more people. Social housing providers benefit from substantial cost savings on this environmental flooring option and a quick turnaround of service.
“Diversion of carpet waste from landfill increased by 30%, from 2011 to 2012.”
Nottingham-based CRUK member, Carpet Tile Recycling (CTR), specialises in the recovery and reclamation of used carpet tiles. In partnership with CRUK member, Loughton Contracts, it recovered 15,000m² of uplifted INVISTA Antron® carpet tiles from Barclaycard’s offices in Northampton, which were sorted, graded and a proportion resold; some for reuse in a housing project in Doncaster and others in a
St Saviour’s Church, Nottingham 44
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