A few days ago, Darlene, my little friend’s niece came to me and said that her teacher taught them that carpet is recyclable.
– No it can not be recycled, was my quick answer. It might be possible to reuse it, but doubtlessly impossible to recycle it.
As she didn’t stop arguing with me and even added that those carpet recyclers had their own association in America. I decided to go on Google and searched for it. As it appear, my little friend was amazingly right. I found about the carpet recyclers association. On top of that there is even a construction waste recycler in my area that handle such items. I found about Recyconstruction and Recymobililer in my neighborhood : they provide recycling services for almost all appliances, furniture, electronic equipment and construction debris. I spoke to an environment specialist, John, and he explained to me about all the material that it is recyclable as of now.
– Carpet is shredded and recycled for its plastic content, it might end up making brand new carpet or anything else that is made with plastic.
– Wood debris are shipped to an electric producer, who use wood to generate power. It is a smoke-free fermentation process that do not add up to climate changes.
– Drywall are going through machinery and transformed into powder, pulp as well as paint are taken off, and the remaining gypsum will either serve as fertilizer or serve to make new panels.
And it goes on and on for all variety of recyclable material. I found it incredibly great to realize that we are standing there. To people expecting to earn money selling their old shelves or drywall, It is important to add that there is a fee to recycle that type of material.
– We used to be exclusively in the business of e-waste recycling a while ago. It changed, since at some point we were only recycling the items that we were accepting because there was no value to resell it, we had to put a recycling fee to some material that were more expensive to us to properly recycle than to toss away. Since we realized that people want to make a difference to the planet and were were OK with paying a minimal charge to cover our handling of the products, we decided it was time to add other recycling services that couldn’t be sustainable by themselves to give an another option than landfill.
– Luckily, those services received a tremendous feedback, as it came to the market right in the middle of all green movements, residential or commercial. Businesses and building owners are more than aware of the green advantages, reason why more and more building managers are fighting to be LEED certified.