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As the saying goes, you never stop learning. I find myself saying that at least once a day, and I enjoy learning and discovering innovative ways to do things. Recently, I learned about a company that is reaching new heights when it comes to recycling and reusing many kinds of materials, including wool carpet.
The company’s name is 4Recycling Ltd. It is based in the United Kingdom, but the company came all the way to Florida to present at this year’s annual CARE (Carpet America Recovery Effort) meeting. The subject of their presentation was an experimental program that has shown tremendous success in using wool carpet as a soil enhancer to bring fallow fields back to verdant life in various parts of England and Wales.
Researchers found that by grinding up wool carpet (which, in England, is usually a mixture of wool and synthetic fibers) and adding the mixture to the soil, they are able to bring even the most devastated land areas, like coal strip mines and slag fields in Wales, back to life. Their experiment demonstrated that wool rich carpet provided a valuable source of major plant nutrients and organic matter and had the enrichment value equivalent to limestone.
You can see why this would be of interest in the carpet world — groundbreaking ideas on recycling — and how we can further help the environment through reusing carpet, which is right up our alley here at the Carpet and Rug Institute and CARE.
CARE is a joint industry-government effort to increase recycling and reuse of post-consumer carpet and reduce the amount of waste carpet going to landfills. CARE was established in 2002 in a nationwide agreement signed by members of the carpet industry, representatives of government agencies at the federal, state and local levels, and non-governmental organizations.
Since its beginning, CARE has supported the growth of the carpet reclamation industry by keeping hundreds of millions of post-consumer carpet out of landfills. But 4Recycling tackles more than just carpet — they also have soil-enrichment programs that use biosolids (sewage sludge), water treatment sludge, wood waste, food and beverage drink residues, lime, gypsum, textiles, animal byproducts, green waste, ash, paper crumble and other residues.
4Recycling explained at the annual CARE meeting how most of the wastes they recycle are spread on land for agricultural use or for the manufacture of soil in land restoration. The company’s website continues:
“Before any byproduct is recycled to land it is subjected to thorough technical scrutiny by ... trained soil scientists. This process can involve chemical and biological tests, plant growth trials, leaching tests and field experiments to prove that the byproducts confer agriculture benefit.”
What an incredible way to take waste byproducts generated by humans and incorporate them back into the soil! And 4Recycling doesn’t stop there. The company recycles byproducts to use in land restoration, and carefully match the different types of waste materials to the characteristics of the particular end-use sites, such as hard rock quarries, sand and gravel extraction sites, closed landfills, opencast coal sites and sites stripped of top soil. The photographs of their projects are amazing: They have successfully brought back barren tracts of land to lush, green fields that look like something off of a postcard.
4Recycling points out that the company’s land reclamation efforts create new soils and grow new grass and trees. In addition, the new land areas enable the creation of new jobs in areas with industrial histories. Most important, derelict land is returned to worthwhile use, while the environment benefits from the use of materials that have not been landfilled, a process that cuts costs for byproduct producers and preserves landfill capacity.
So what does all of this mean for the carpet industry, and even more, the United States?
It’s a great example of how we, too, can continue to improve on recycling byproducts that we may have never thought possible. I can think of countless places across this country that would greatly benefit from land restoration and fertilization.
For almost 10 years, CARE and the carpet industry have made sure we do our best to keep carpet out of landfills. But after learning about 4Recycling, I’m convinced we here in the states can push even further to recycle more than the obvious products and byproducts, and figure out how we can use them to give back to the environment.
Werner Braun is president of the Dalton-based Carpet and Rug Institute.
