Seattle Wants To Recycle 50K Tons of Carpet Yearly

Seattle, WA, June 21, 2010--The Seattle Public Utilities and the King County, Wash., Solid Waste Division are developing a program with a goal of recycling of 50,000 tons of used carpet per year.

The King County Solid Waste Division's LinkUp program and SPU organized a Carpet Recycling Workgroup, which consisted of state and local governments and research university representatives from Washington, Oregon, California, and British Columbia.

The result of this collaboration is the Northwest Carpet Recycling Strategy, which aims to increase demand for carpet recycling and drive demand for commodities derived from and products made with recovered carpet fiber.

"There is significant potential to spur economic development by creating an industry to collect and process used carpet into usable commodities," James Palmer, economic development manager for the Washington State Department of Commerce, told Recycling Today.

"We are also collaborating with manufacturing businesses in the state to find local end markets for the materials derived from recycled carpet."

The workgroup hosted two business roundtable sessions with industry stakeholders to gain input while developing the plan. More than 100 industry representatives and workgroup members attended the sessions. Parties provided input about what they thought were the most important activities needed to get carpet recycling established in the region.

The strategy also includes action items to pursue product stewardship measures such as legislation, memoranda-of-understanding, product redesign, closed-loop recycling, and take-back programs. The goal of the activities is to use solid waste and other public policies to influence costs and facilitate the flow of quality material toward recycling.

Other actions outlined in the strategy include reduction of asbestos contamination in used carpet, formation of a consortium focused on bringing a carpet processing facility to the Northwest and continued collaboration between interested parties.

Currently, most of the 50,000 tons of used and scrap carpet generated in Seattle and King County is being landfilled; area solid waste agencies estimate that only a very small percentage is recycled.