Boost your retail business by recycling carpet waste, says CRUK
Retailers can help their businesses and the environment by recycling their carpet waste responsibly. Carpet Recycling UK will again be promoting its sustainable services at the 2014 Buying Groups’ National Flooring Show on May 13th & 14th.
Visitors to CRUK’s stand at the Solihull event can learn more about how an expansion in clean installation waste take-back schemes and the rising numbers of outlets processing carpet waste for new uses offer many advantages for retailers.
For CRUK members Designer Contracts and Oxbridge Flooring, increasing amounts of carpet offcuts are being collected through reverse logistics, segregated and kept dry on site before being sent for recycling. Material is baled before collection and eventually reprocessed into new underlay products.
In CRUK’s third appearance at Cranmore Park, the award-winning industry-backed association for recycling and reusing waste carpet will be highlighting responsible disposal alternatives for post-consumer and clean installation carpet waste.
Having beaten its original landfill diversion target (25% by 2015) two years early with a 27% rate in 2013, CRUK is keen to attract even more retailers for whom take-back schemes offer a number of advantages.
“Retailers who take positive steps towards sustainable disposal of waste carpet, such as participation in take-back schemes for clean installation off-cuts, can benefit from enhanced customer perceptions and reduced waste collections,” says CRUK Director Laurance Bird.
“Not only are they enhancing their green credentials in helping to divert carpet and underlay waste from landfill, but they differentiate their business from competitors. This is an added selling point with increasingly eco-conscious consumers,” he continues.
Production of non-woven products from reprocessed post-manufacture waste and clean installation off-cuts, such as underlay and insulation felts, has risen thanks to the introduction of more take-back schemes across the UK.
Cheshire-based furnishings company Arigho Bianchi succeeded in achieving one of their top sustainability objectives to recycle carpet offcuts through partnering with Anglo Recycling, a CRUK member. Anglo makes Crumbwool underlay from recycled fibres and rubber granules from recycled tyres; this underlay is promoted in store to consumers as ‘the best experience you will never see’.
Flooring Department Manager Neville Hinchliffe says the service not only saves money on offcuts disposal costs, but more importantly ensures that materials are reused sustainably.
CRUK’s new target is 60% diversion from landfill by 2020. Some 400,000 tonnes of carpet waste arises each year in the UK.
Carpet Recycling UK welcomes enquiries from all types of organisations interested in finding new outlets for their waste carpet. It can be contacted on 0161 440 8325 or visit www.carpetrecyclinguk.com
