CRI to Fund Voluntary Product Stewardship for Second Year

Dalton, GA, November 18, 2015—The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) held its annual meeting in downtown Dalton, Georgia yesterday, where it announced that it would dedicate half of its annual budget to fund the Voluntary Product Stewardship (VPS) initiative for a second year; $4.5 million of the CRI’s $9 million budget has been allocated for VPS in the 2016 calendar year. This is the same level of funding the program received in 2015—its inaugural year.

The VPS program, which was launched at this same meeting last year, is designed to assist the infrastructure that diverts post-consumer carpet from the nations landfills and encourage recycling. Most of the funding will go toward offsetting the expenses within the nation’s network of collector/sorters. This fund became necessary last year, as the value of the recycled material would no longer offset the costs of handling it. The value declined for two reasons: the cost for virgin plastic is cheaper, so the value of recycled material has declined as well; and, secondly, more of the fiber collected today is PET, which based on today’s technology has very little post-consumer value versus nylon.

The CRI is hopeful that the market dynamics that effect the value or recycled plastics will change and that eventually the reclamation of post consumer carpet will be self-sustaining.

In his remarks yesterday, Joe Yarbrough’s, president of the CRI, reviewed the accomplishments of the past year, which included revisions to the Green Label Plus standards for indoor air quality and the CRI 104 and 105 carpet installation standards. Yarbrough also announced a new “back printing polymer identification” initiative that will be spearheaded by the CRI. This program will enable recyclers to quickly determine what type of fiber is on the face of any given sample of carpet.

This was the second annual meeting for the CRI under Joe Yarborough’s leadership. Prior to taking the helm at CRI, Yarbrough was an executive with Mohawk Industries. The Carpet and Rug Institute is the trade association responsible for providing unbiased information about carpet—based on fact and science and guided by principle.

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