Chilewich Modifies Plynyl for Green Carpeting

New York, NY, Feb. 9, 2009--Nearly a decade ago, Chilewich, the New York City company that makes synthetic floor mats, upholstery, blinds and table accessories, did not have green concepts in mind, according to a story in SFGate.com.

Owner Sandy Chilewich simply created distinctive items from Lycra and vinyl textiles made for outdoor furniture. Her partner and husband, Joe Sultan, helped start a flooring line but continued working as an architect designing homes for the homeless.

Now that Chilewich/Sultan products are ubiquitous in modern interiors, Sultan, has joined Chilewich full-time. Among his contributions is the company's first venture into a greener kind of carpeting called Chilewich Contract, which has recently earned the Carpet and Rug Institute's Green Label Plus stamp.

According to Sultan, Chilewich's newest woven wall-to-wall carpeting has fewer volatile organic compounds emissions than ever before; it uses less energy and has better chemistry and engineering.

Sultan frequently used tough woven synthetic carpeting similar to Chilewich's new product for housing projects but it was always imported. He realized that Chilewich's existing line of Plynyl floor textiles, which are made in Georgia, could be reconfigured as carpets.

The engineers figured out techniques to adhere standard 56-inch-wide rolls of woven vinyl fabric (made for furniture) to a spongy polyurethane backing, thus eliminating separate padding. The company that extrudes the yarn now also produces the carpet. This one-piece, one-stop manufacturing reduces shipping and saves on installation time. It costs about $10 a square foot. Installation and freight charges will vary.

Sultan also increased the width of the rolls to 6 feet and hopes to go up to 10 feet. The improved vinyl yarn has a fiberglass core that does not look frayed when cut, which helps.

"When we made tiles from the old material we saw too many fuzzy seams, so we took the tiles off the market," Sultan said. "We were small enough so we could fix the product midstream." The improved tiles and Basketweave, Stripe, Bamboo, Ikat and Woodgrain pattern carpets are sold as Chilewich Contract to the trade.

"The beauty is in the weave," Sultan said. "A lot of synthetic wood flooring is just a picture of wood laid over vinyl." A molded carpet would be like that. The carpet can also take high traffic, Sultan said. "We used real people as walkers to test it." Twenty thousand steps later, the carpet showed little wear.

While the backing has about 20 percent post-industrial recycled material, the actual carpet has none because it would be impossible to control the color. "We could use fly ash and crushed glass in the polyurethane backing but because our factory also makes medical components they can't use waste glass," Sultan said. "But getting the Green Label Plus puts us on the road to getting greener."