SPOTLIGHT
CLOSING THE LOOP
CISUFLO demonstrates how collaboration drives progress towards circularity in contract flooring.
CISUFLO (CIrcular SUstainable FLOor coverings) is an international project which has run from June 2021 to June 2025. It has had the goal of minimising the environmental impact of the European flooring sector by striving for a systemic framework for circular and sustainable floorcoverings, taking into account both technical feasibility and socio-economic factors. To achieve this mission, the project focused on several ‘pilots’ to assess the circularity of floorcoverings – including laminate, vinyl (LVT and vinyl flooring) and textile-based flooring (carpet and carpet tiles). In the UK, the Contract Flooring Association (CFA) and Flooring Industry Training Association (FITA) have played a leading role.
˝By using bio-circular PVC instead of virgin PVC in one product range, a carbon footprint reduction of 40% could be achieved.˝
Meeting every six months, the project enabled conversations across sectors, bringing different flooring specialists across industries and nations together to share and develop insights. Ine de Vilder, research scientist at Centexbel and project coordinator of CISUFLO, likened it to a puzzle – figuring out who can do what, seeing where cooperation was possible and bringing in contacts from outside, and eventually you have a consortium working together.
CISUFLO demonstrates how joint working across borders drives success, bringing together 19 partners from across research, industry and trade association backgrounds in seven different countries with 32 voluntary supporting parties. Contributing to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, the project secured funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.
One of a number of workstreams in the overall project, the CLaminate workstream involved rebuilding a Unilin laminate pilot in France into an industrial line to extract wood fibres and recycle them to produce new high-density fibreboard (HDF), which in turn provides a base board to produce new laminate flooring. The pilot line uses a steam explosion process to disintegrate end-of-life laminate and extract the wood fibres. The resulting wood fibres can replace virgin fibres industrially in a range of 3 to 5 wt% (weight percentage). The plant aims to launch officially by the end of the year, greatly increasing capacity – a significant achievement in this timeframe.
With CFA organising research and FITA conducting trials between May 2024 and February 2025, the UK has been a key player in the CTextile workstream, assessing the feasibility of monomaterial carpet manufactured predominantly out of polyamide 6 (PA6) – at least 85 wt% (weight percentage) to have an economically viable recycling process. While prototypes demonstrate success as a high-end domestic textile floorcovering, more must be done to achieve viability for the commercial sector. Throughout the research process, there was great engagement from CFA members, including contractors and manufacturers, as well as support from the CISUFLO workstream including Edel Carpets and Aquafil.
In some cases, a monomaterial approach is not technically possible, due to a conventional backing being required in order for the product to reach dimensional stability, such as is the case with carpet tiles. A separation layer based on a thermoplastic adhesive can be included in the product, so that at end-of-life heat can be used to separate the primary and secondary backings, enabling them to be diverted to the corresponding recycling streams.
Due to material limitations, in the CVinyl workstream it was found that in order to introduce recycled content into the usual plastisol coating process, a particle size of smaller than 300 µm is necessary, and no greater than 2 to 3 wt% recycled content
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