Carpets: Getting Greener All The Time
Carpet retailers are offering more eco-friendly choices than ever before. Green initiatives are Affecting every facet of the carpet industry including manufacturing, distribution as well as the disposal processes.
One step at a time, the carpet industry is getting greener. But with manufacturing a consumer product, going green is not just one action. Rather it’s a commitment to a total review of the product and how it is manufactured, distributed, used and disposed of when the useful life is over.” DaveMeyer, Owner Mohawk Floorz
The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts
“We feel fortunate to work with Mohawk Flooring in that they are committed to getting green and their program is a good example of what lengths a conscientious manufacturer will go in addressing environmental issues,” says Meyer. It’s not easy and it’s an inclusive process. Although it is easy to say you are green, it’s not as easy to actually be green. You just can’t snap your fingers and voila, you are green. You have to consider each step of the process from raw materials all the way through product disposal to create an impact and have a foundation to build upon. This article gives some examples of how various green elements can be inserted into a product life cycle.
All of the following examples are provided by Mohawk Flooring.
Raw Materials: Renewable & Recyclable
- Recycled materials are contained in 500 different Mohawk products, including carpets, carpet tiles and cushion to laminates and ceramic tiles
- Renewably sourced polymer made from corn sugar is used to make carpet fibers replacing a finite resource (petroleum) with a renewable one, saving 10 million gallons of gas annually.
- Mohawk diverts more than 1.75 billion pounds of pre-consumer and post consumer waste from landfills each year through recycling fibers (with the figure growing annually)
- Renewable fast growing southern pine is used to create laminate products
- Mohawk suppliers plant six times more trees than are harvested
- All Mohawk laminate boards made in the United States contain 75% pre-consumer recycled content
- Reuses more than one billion pounds of waste wood in laminate and board production
- Recycles 3 billion bottles a year (22 billion Since 1999) into carpet fiber and home textiles
- Recycles 30 million pounds of tires annually into doormats by Mohawk alone (other manufacturers are doing the same in varying degrees)
- Recycles any kind of latex-backed carpet regardless of the type of fiber (including polyester, polypropylene, PTT, nylon 6 and nylon 6,6)
Reducing Manufacturing Waste
- Wood waste from manufacturing is used as bio-mass fuel for process heating
- 100% of water from manufacturing process at most Mohawk ceramic tile facilities is reused and never discharged as waste water into surrounding watersheds
Packaging
- Thousands of trees saved every year due to using plastic carpet cores made from recycled plastic
Reduce—Recycle—Reuse—Renew
“Any business that is going green has to have an inclusive plan and a commitment to carry it out,” says Meyer. “The flooring industry as a whole is following a green track,making changes where we can now, and putting into place the foundation for making even larger steps forward in the future. You can see that commitment in every area of the manufacturing, distribution and disposal processes.”
“To make things even better, we have never had products that are as durable, varied and colorful as what we presently provide to our customers,” continues Meyer. “It makes coming to work in the morning exciting.”
