Simply Green - Carpet: Rough to Recycle

The Rug's the Rub!

by Terese Hartjoy @ Thorne's World

So you're looking for the green flooring solution? It's not new carpet!

According to the Carpet America Recovery Effort post consumer carpet is costly and difficult to recycle. Current costs range between 5 cents to 25 cents per pound of old carpet (at typically between about 4-5 pounds per square yard). Carpet recycling is costly because carpet is a complex system with many components of different chemical composition. Each component must be identified and separated and each step in the identification, separation, shredding and handling sequence adds another cost in the process of recycling old carpets.

CARE's projections place a conservative estimate of about 7 billion pounds of old carpet in our land fills in the year 2012. Their goal is to have an optimistic 40% of it recycled or reused by then.

So think about steam cleaning that old carpet for another season or two, or in the least check out CARE's Carpet recycling FAQs and think twice before sending your old carpet to the land fill. As is so aptly put on the CARE website, please remember:

"Ultimately society must bear the cost of sustainability or it will not happen in a free enterprise system."

Remember folks, keep it green with Simply Green!