Design for recycling topic explored at Carpet Recycling UK

The seventh annual Carpet Recycling UK event, held in Birmingham, U.K., on 11 June 2015, explored the importance of making sustainable connections and the need to rethink how carpet products are designed to facilitate future recycling.

The one-day event was preceded with a networking awards dinner on June 10th, with conference sponsorship again provided by Invista, manufacturer of ANTRON carpet fibres.

Speaking afterward at the city’s Institute of Engineering and Technology, CRUK Director Laurance Bird said, “Our programme reflected the full scope of our activities, with a key focus on encouraging and inspiring our members to consider innovative ways of reducing and reusing carpet waste.”

Issues discussed at the event include local authorities’ need to increase recycling rates to meet European Union mandatory goals; rising disposal costs; landfill site closures meaning less capacity and greater distances to dispose; separate collections under TEEP regulations and EU plans for circular economy progress and possible landfill bans.

“How new products are designed now will have a critical impact on how they can be recycled in the future. These issues were explored in detail during our popular ‘Circular Economy in Action’ sessions,” Bird said.

More intelligent use of products, components and materials was the core message from Ken Webster of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, who concluded that the Circular Economy is inevitable for resource recovery. “The leading element is design: if we don’t design it right in the first place, we’ll have a lot of trouble getting it back.”

Interior designer Vanessa Brady OBE of Interior Design Services Ltd. and president of the Society of British and International Design explained how interior designers can guide consumers toward the best flooring choices. “Through sharing knowledge, we can bridge the gap and advise on products that can reduce environmental impact over their lifetimes,” she stated.

Arighi Bianchi’s Neville Hinchliffe enlightened delegates on that company's success in achieving zero waste to landfill by recycling both carpet off-cuts and postconsumer carpet, saving in excess of £5,000 annually in disposal cost. The retailer sends off-cuts to Anglo Recycling for use in new underlay.

Keynote speaker Mark Shayler of the U.K. brand management company Ape Studios emphasised how Britain needs to ‘think, design and make’ in a changing global economy. “The rise of the circular economy, the sharing economy, and the peer-to-peer economy is happening at the same time. We have to change how we do things.”

Updating delegates on CRUK’s Vision to 2020—60 percent diversion from landfill—CRUK Scheme Manager Jane Gardner emphasized the move away from the ‘take, make, dispose’ model. “By keeping resources in the supply chain and designing carpets for recycling, we can look towards closed-loop recycling of carpets with full support from carpet suppliers,” she said.

Gardner also presented a case study on West London Waste Authority’s success with recycling waste carpet from London households, demonstrating how this can save costs as well as contribute to increased recycling rates.

Other sessions covered the sustainability credentials of wool, how to increase carpet life from The WoolSafe Organisation and commercial carpet recycling, alongside reuse and recycling advice from Greenstream Flooring. International guest Anthony Cline from the U.S.-based Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) outlined the key success factors in US carpet recycling.

Russell Owens from the Welsh Government addressed the importance of partnerships and explained how councils in Wales have collaborated on recycling 2,124 metric tons of carpet to date.

Carpet Recycling UK is an industry-backed association for recycling and reusing waste carpet. The association reports that around 400,000 metric tons of carpet waste arises each year in the U.K. and welcomes inquiries from organizations interested in finding new outlets for their waste carpet. For more information, please call Marie Rhodes on 0161 440 83250161 440 8325, email Marie@carpetrecyclinguk.com or visit www.carpetrecyclinguk.com.