Closing the Loop: ReEntry® 2.0
The carpet industry estimates that 5 billion pounds of its product ends up in landfills each year. The commercial carpet industry has long struggled to develop an economically and technologically viable method to recycle carpet at the end of its useful life, especially the most carbon intensive component of the product, Nylon 6,6 fiber.
In 2007, Interface became the first carpet manufacturer to implement a process for the “clean separation” of carpet fiber from backing, allowingfor a maximum amount of post-consumer material to be recycled into new products with minimal contamination. Through a process called ReEntry
® 2.0, clean, post-consumer Nylon 6,6 fiber is returned to Interface's fiber supplier where it, in combination with some virgin materials, is recycled into new Nylon 6,6 for use in new carpet fiber. At the same time, the post-consumer vinyl carpet backing is recycled into new backing using Interface’s Cool Blue™ backing technology. Plastics that cannot be used for Interface processes or products are distributed to other industry suppliers for re-use in their material streams.
As part of Interface’s Mission Zero™ commitment to eliminate its environmental impact, it was critical that the process we created and implemented made good sense environmentally as well as economically. To that end, ReEntry
® 2.0 has lower embodied energy use than other recycling systems in use in the carpet industry today. Furthermore, not only will ReEntry
® 2.0 keep more carpet out of landfills, it will provide a steady stream of post-consumer recycled materials across the industry, essentially putting a value on what was formerly viewed as a waste product.