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August 27, 2010

Werner Braun: Lots to be proud of in carpet industry

I feel like a proud parent. You know that feeling when your child has accomplished something as simple as cleaning off the table without being asked or the bigger moments of making an A on that science test that they’ve been cramming for? My children’s accomplishments bring me happiness.

I must state again that today I feel like a proud parent. For years, the carpet industry has moved its goals toward not being an industry that makes a product but rather an industry making a difference.

So why am I a proud parent to carpet, you might be asking yourself. Well, that’s easy.

We have documented such things as reduction of water usage by over 55 percent since 1995, and reduced energy consumption per unit of product by over 70 percent since 1995. Our thermal fuels used per 1,000 square yards of carpet manufactured are down almost 50 percent in that time frame.

The hazardous air pollutants have been squeezed down to over 70 percent since 1990. In fact, our industry may be one of the few in the United States that meets the Kyoto Protocol. The industry today has the same CO2 emissions as it did in 1990, yet produces 42 percent more product.

This leads me to the most recent news that crossed my desk regarding one of our member companies. It underwent an evaluation from a company called Aelux which proudly boasts of being “The Energy Savings Company.” Some of the things they were able to do through a retrofitting procedure in which they replaced all the manufacturer’s lighting is astonishing.

I am conflicted of what good news to share first. The company has reduced total energy consumption from lighting by 1.3 million kilowatts, equaling a total annual savings of $94,563, or 45 percent from the original illumination expenditure, with a 10-year cumulative savings of $945,630.

Nearly $1 million saved over a decade. But wait, it gets even better. The estimated environmental savings are as follow: a carbon dioxide reduction of 2.74 million pounds, a nitrogen oxide reduction of 5,973 pounds, and a sulfur dioxide reduction of 16,478 pounds. I know what you are thinking — these numbers mean nothing to me. So what if I told you these numbers were equivalent to removing 228 cars off the road and planting 31,881 trees per year, for a 10-year total of 2,280 cars and 318,810 trees?

All from changing light bulbs. Don’t you feel like a proud parent being a member of the carpet family community?

Carpet companies are becoming focused on sustainable growth, creating high performance products while decreasing their environmental footprint for the value of future generations. Sustainability means more than just recycling; it’s an entire shift in the way a company thinks about its products and the manufacturing processes in relation to the environment.

The growing benefits of our industry are accompanied by enduring commitments to a sustainable industry. Recycling for us means recovering the maximum possible value from spent carpet, and making that consistent with the environmental and economical resources conservation.

Following the Carpet and Rug Institute’s 2000 Sustainability Report, Matthew Realff, a professor of engineering at Georgia Tech, provided a comparison: The amount of energy reduction reported by the carpet industry is equivalent to the annual emissions of 226,000 cars. This is the approximate number of cars licensed annually in the Washington, D.C., area.

These numbers never cease to amaze me and with calculations like this that feeling of being a proud parent for the carpet industry will never fade. One of the challenges of doing such a remarkable job on the sustainability front is the effort it takes to continually find more and more innovative ways to reduce the numbers. I can’t help but wonder what the industry has in store for us next.

Werner Braun is president of the Dalton-based Carpet and Rug Institute.

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