Carpet Diem!

Entering the New Age of Carpet Recycling

LILA BALTMAN

We've all heard of recycling cans, bottles, and newspapers, but when was the last time you heard of recycling carpet?

For years, the multifamily industry has disposed of carpet the same way many other industries have - by calling up a local disposal contractor and allowing the used carpet to be dumped in local landfills. Most members of the apartment industry have probably never even thought twice about carpet disposal and its environmental implications.

Fortunately, however, others in the world have, and now, thanks to a new technology, carpet is something we can add to our recycling list. Because thousands of apartments annually replace old carpet with new carpet, the apartment industry is certainly one industry that can make excellent use out of this new recycling venture.

WHY RECYCLE CARPET?

Nearly 1.6 billion square yards, or 6.3 billion pounds of carpet were manufactured in the United States in 1995. This carpet used three billion pounds of face fiber. New carpet displaced the old carpet in most installations, and in 1995, 4 billion pounds of carpet were discarded, making up 1.6 percent of the 250 billion pounds of trash in American landfills. While carpet is benign and represents a relatively small amount of the total landfilled waste, it does represent an opportunity to conserve valuable landfill space. Carpet also represents a form of fossil fuel. For this reason, it is believed that carpet should be recycled not only to conserve landfill space, but also to conserve valuable nonrenewable resources.

Larry Smith, general manager of Arbor Contract Carpet in Dallas, a large floorcovering contractor that specializes in flooring replacement to the apartment industry, says that for years his company tried to find a less expensive and more productive way to dispose of used carpet. Just recently, says Smith, his company learned about AlliedSignal Inc. and the new state-of-the-art recycling facility that the company is constructing.

Beginning in the fall of 1999, Evergreen Nylon Recycling llc., the joint venture between AlliedSignal Inc. and DSM Chemicals North America, Inc., will complete construction of its revolutionary nylon recycling facility. This $80 million facility will be responsible for keeping 20 million pounds of carpet out of landfills each year.

Located in Augusta, Georgia, this brand new facility will have the technological capabilities of doing what no other facility in the world can - make a nylon product, such as carpet, 'live' forever.

The Evergreen venture is based on jointly developed, patented technology that converts nylon carpet into carprolactam, the basic raw material used to make type 6 nylon. Type 6 nylon is used in a wide range of applications in which performance and aesthetics are required, such as carpet and engineering plastics for automobiles.

'When nylon's useful life as a carpet, for instance, is over, we can take it from your home, throw the whole thing into our patented recycling process, recover the base chemical and make a brand new car part or any nylon product we want,' says Dave Mezzanotte, AlliedSignal's vice president and Evergreen's general manager. 'And if we didn't tell you, you'd never know it was a recycled product because it has the same aesthetics and performance of nylon made from scratch.' According to Bill Price, president of DSM Chemicals North America, the industry calls this kind of recycling system 'post consumer, closed loop.' It involves a product already used by consumers that gets continually re-used without waste requiring disposal.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE CARPET?

The ultimate goal of AlliedSignal's carpet recycling program is to reclaim virgin grade caprolactam from the Nylon 6 carpets. Caprolactam is the 'chemical building block' used to manufacture nylon 6. Caprolactam can be obtained from nylon carpet through a process called depolymerization. The caprolactam is then re-polymerized to form virgin-quality nylon 6 which can be used to make any nylon 6 product the company manufactures. While AlliedSignal is currently only interested in recycling nylon 6, the company is actively pursuing applications in which other carpet materials, such as nylon 6.6. polypropylene and polyester, can be used. In the United States, AlliedSignal has led a committee within the Carpet and Rug Institute which deals specifically with carpet recycling issues. In Europe, there is an organization called the GuT. This organization deals with all environmental issues related to carpet.

TO LEARN MORE

If you may be interested in a carpet collection program, AlliedSignal can provide information about the carpet market, carpet collection, and carpet sorting technology. They can also assist in developing economic estimates of a collection program.

For more information, call Mike Costello at 804/520-3165 or Edward Duffy at 804/520-3564.

Baltman is assistant editor of Units.