Mary’s answer caught me by surprise.  “Well, there are a lot of fools like you then.”  She added that they routinely see folks from Ft. Collins and even further away, which is why they are working on the details of opening additional collection facilities in Ft. Collins and elsewhere around the state.  I was pleasantly surprised.

As her friendly team unloaded our used carpet from Rambo for me, Mary proceeded to give me a tour to illustrate their process that currently prevents 30,000 to 50,000 lbs. of carpet per day from clogging local landfills.  They’ve already diverted over 2-million pounds of carpet in their first summer of operation!

First, the carpet and foam pad is queued up near the unloading area and sorted.  All of the foam pad will get recycled into new pad.  Decent carpet gets separated from the nasty stuff.  The former will eventually go into new carpet of recycled content.  The latter will get incinerated for power generation.

Once sorted, the carpet and pad are delivered to a Bobcat operator who loads it into a baling machine.

Another handling machine operator then moves the bales over to stacks at the loading dock.

And finally, a forklift operator loads the bales onto outbound trucks. 

So where does it all go?  The pad and decent carpet is shipped to the southeast part of the country where it will be manufactured into new product.  The grungy carpet currently goes to an plant in Tulsa, where it is converted to power by incineration. 

Mary added that CRS is working with a cement manufacturer in Florence, CO to get permitted for burning waste carpet as an alternative to coal in the cement making process.  In addition to cutting down on coal consumption, fuel consumption and carbon emissions would be reduced due to the shorter haul.

Once unloaded, I paid $25 for CRS to handle 252 lbs of carpet ($0.10/lb) and was on my way (they do not charge for recycling foam pad).  And as I drove back to Ft. Collins, I pondered the good and not so good aspects of this little journey. 

It is very good that there is enough demand for recycling carpet and sufficient reward for reclamation businesses to do so that companies like CRS are able to expand and make the process more efficient.  It is also good that the economics at the household level, once carpet recycling sites are more broadly available, are not much different than those for dumping at the landfill (It cost me $25 to dispose in this responsible manner vs. what would have been a $16 tipping fee at our local landfill which is also subsidized by our property taxes).  The participation of carpet manufacturers in Carpet America Recovery Effort, whose website you can use to locate a carpet recycling center in your area, is also a good thing.

As for all of the fuel consumption, carbon emissions and soot and particulate output related to recycling, remanufacture and incineration…well, not so good. 

Which leads me to a couple of final thoughts.  First, if you have used carpet to get rid of, by all means recycle it. 

Second, when you replace that used carpet, do so with a harder, healthier alternative.  Consider cork flooring, which is beautiful, warm and comfortable underfoot, naturally hypoallergenic, easy to clean, and a pretty easy DIY project to install.  Or go with wood flooring from Forest Stewarship Council (FSC) or reclaimed sources (beetle kill pine in our region, for example).  Any of these products will outlast several carpet and pad replacements, making them gentler on the environment outside your home as they improve the environment inside of it.

This past weekend, Lara and I ripped carpeting and pad out of our house in preparation for the new floating cork floor we will be laying soon.  I don’t care how often you vacuum and shampoo your carpeting, when you get up close and personal with it to remove it after a few years in place, it is just plain disgusting.  In our case, we bought this house six years ago and until we moved in two months ago, rented it to folks with pets.  Needless to say, the carpet and pad we were handling went well beyond disgusting and into the nasty realm.

Earlier today, I walked out my front door to the view that you see in the picture above.  Our local construction materials salvage yard, ReSource, has helped us out immensely with landfill diversion during our remodeling project by accepting things like cabinets, light fixtures and old appliances.  However, I had asked around and searched a fair bit for carpet recycling options when we started our project, without success.  Still, the thought of driving carpet to the landfill and dumping it again was really bothering me. 

So I turned to google again, entered “recycling carpet” (without Ft. Collins in the search line this time), and hit upon a website I had not seen before by CARE (Carpet America Recovery Effort) .  CARE is a joint effort by the carpet industry and the government to encourage carpet and pad recycling and minimize the quantity of waste carpet going into our landfills.  You gotta believe that sustainable living and sustainable business practices are really starting to catch on when an older industry like carpet manufacturing gets proactive about it’s full product lifecycle.  Kudos to the carpet manufacturers!

Once on the CARE site, I clicked on the icon to find a carpet reclamation partner in my area and wound up chatting with Kristi at Colorado Reclamation Systems.  They’ve been operating for about three months now and have been swamped with folks who would rather recycle carpet than landfill it. 

To make a potentially long story short for now, I’ll be driving to CRS’s  facility some time next week to recycle our nasty old carpet.  They are in Denver so it is a bit of a haul.  But as their website points out, carpet makes up between 3% and 5% of the waste stream in our landfills, so it’s a drive well worth it.  I’ll post again after I visit CRS with more information about their operations, fees and potential plans to expand collection to other parts of Colorado.

I used some leftover adhesive from a previous tile job at home, and was able to leave the original red “kitchen tile” hearth in place underneath this new tile to achieve a good grade match with the new cork floor we had installed a few months prior.   Lara had the great idea of using some of the remaining low VOC paint leftover from painting our living room walls to liven up the grungy brick-n-mortar portion of the fireplace wall and really accentuate the original woodwork on the upper wall.  See pictures here.

For $14 out-of-pocket, we were able to move from a decidely dated mid-century look, to something much closer to mid-century modern.  Moreover, we generated virtually no waste with our little project (just a few sliver cuts from the tile).  And, we put to good use tiles, grout, adhesive and paint that might otherwise have gone to waste.

ReSource and your local reclaimed materials store are businesses whose primary mission is landfill diversion.  Riverwired has some sobering statistics that speak to the importance of this mission.  One critical data point – 136 million tons of construction waste and demolition debris are generated each year in the U.S.   Obviously businesses that help us keep as much of this tonnage as possible out of the landfill have an important mission!

You’ll find the folks who work at reclaimed building materials outlets to be passionate about the environment, and full of creative ideas for reuse, recycling and upcycling (into furniture, art, greenhouses – even chicken coops) the building materials they salvage and stock.   Check out our video tour of ReSource with Regional Manager Kendol Gustafson below as an example.

Finally, if you’re interested in remodeling with reclaimed materials, now might be a good time to subscribe to our blog, as we’ll be starting a series of posts shortly on an extensive reclaimed materials remodeling project that architect Justin Larson and his wife Sandra are doing at their home here in Ft. Collins.