Mannington Commercial Begins VCT Recycling

Calhoun, GA, May 12, 2009--Mannington Commercial has begun an environmental initiative to reclaim and recycle post-consumer vinyl composition tile (VCT), helping to reduce the more than 1 billion pounds of VCT disposed of in America’s landfills each year.

Partnering with a regionally based reclamation company, Mannington is reclaiming post-consumer tile recovered during the renovation of major regional facilities that are large end-users of VCT.

As part of Mannington’s LOOP program, the construction waste is delivered to Mannington’s manufacturing facilities in Salem, N.J., where Mannington recycles the tile and incorporates it as post-consumer content into new premium tile.

“The volume of VCT going to landfills is an industry-wide challenge,” says Dave Kitts, Mannington’s Vice President – Environment.

”This partnership exemplifies the sort of smart thinking that is reshaping manufacturing today. It’s a simple business equation of supply and demand, built around our commitment to close the materials loop.”

Mannington has been incorporating post-consumer and post-industrial waste into new products for several years.

“Our investment in technology and smart product design makes us the only manufacturer currently able to recycle post-consumer VCT at this level,” says John Emmons, Director of Commercial Manufacturing at Mannington.

“As our capabilities have grown, we have been looking for consistent waste streams to increase the amount of post-consumer content that we can use in our products – because it is the right thing to do.”

According to Emmons, already nearly two million pounds of the material have been recycled into new tile. During year one of the partnership, that number will grow to more than 19 million pounds.

The post-consumer content is first being incorporated into Mannington’s Premium Tile, a product used in commercial healthcare, education and retail applications. Mannington’s Premium Tile is already certified as an Environmentally Preferable Product (EPP), meeting the resilient flooring requirements of NSF-332 certification.

With this investment, beginning June 1 of this year, Mannington’s premium tile products will contain 25% post-consumer content.

“The beauty of this type of flooring is that it can be torn up and recycled forever,” says Emmons. “As our capabilities grow, tile that is cycled back through our process will increase in its post-consumer recycled content.”

Looking forward, Mannington is developing methods for incorporating the waste stream into its full range of products, including resilient sheet, wall base and more.

“During year one, we will take back tile from renovation sites within 500 miles of our New Jersey facilities,” says Kitts. “As we become more and more efficient at incorporating the recycled tile as a material, we will create opportunities to increase the amount of recycled content and expand the use to other products.”