When faced with a challenge, the easy solution is to look at the tools and resources in front of you to solve the problem. But what if a solution does not yet exist? Do you abandon the challenge and wait, or do you go out and create a solution?

The commercial carpet industry has long struggled to develop an economically and technologically viable method to recycle Nylon 6,6, the most prevalent yarn used in the industry today. Myriad approaches to the problem have been attempted, but most were short-lived. Meanwhile, the carpet industry has embraced the concept of sustainability and is committed to diverting both carpet and manufacturing waste from landfills. As such, a glut of old, reclaimed carpet was being stockpiled in warehouses waiting for a viable recycling solution to come along.

State of the Marketplace

Nylon 6,6 comprises a strong component of the fiber in use in commercial carpet today. As manufacturers, specifiers, installers and building construction professionals have become more savvy to the merits of sustainability, more jobs are specified such that old carpet, once reclaimed at the end of its useful life, cannot be sent to a landfill. Until recently, the only viable alternatives available to the industry in the face of such requirements have included minimal recycling of carpet components, down-cycling and waste-to-energy processes. On a large-scale level, there had not been a successful process for recycling Nylon 6,6.

Tenacity Leads to Collaboration

Roughly one year ago, an InterfaceFLOR engineer learned about a process used in the textile industry that held promise for the carpet industry’s challenges with Nylon 6,6. As with many innovations, this technology was incomplete in scope for the carpet industry’s specific needs. Committed to finding a comprehensive solution, however, this tenacious engineer forged ahead, and in the end united a series of disparate companies and technologies to collectively create the first, large-scale means of recycling post-consumer Nylon 6,6 for the commercial market. Independently, none of the partners had the means to finalize the solution, but collectively, a powerful global team was formed. As a result, we now have the means to permit the “clean separation” of carpet fiber from backing, allowing for minimal contamination and by-products, and a maximum amount of post-consumer material to be recycled into new products. The system closes the loop by keeping waste in the technical stream.

Many Inputs, Many Applications

With InterfaceFLOR’s flexible system for recycling any type of carpet, today’s ‘waste’ is food for tomorrow’s carpet and other plastics-based products.

One unique component of this process is its capacity to handle any type of carpet, regardless of fiber type or construction (modular or broadloom). It has the potential to provide a steady supply stream of post-consumer fiber to the industry as a whole, enabling all carpet manufacturers to further their own environmental goals. Beyond the carpet industry, this process can provide feedstock for any number of applications in plastics and related industries.

The marketplace has long demanded products with post-consumer Nylon 6,6, and the evolution of InterfaceFLOR’s ReEntropy and subsequent post-consumer product lines stand as compelling evidence that there is value in capturing waste for use as future raw materials. As newer products are introduced, the marketplace will create a pull that provides incentives for all manufacturers to meet the demand.

Technical Food Chain

ReEntropy is the first product to result from InterfaceFLOR’s new technology for recycling Nylon 6,6 fiber.

InterfaceFLOR’s first products from this new Nylon 6,6 recycling process are designed according to the concept of Biomimicry, the practice of looking at how nature uses raw materials. Nature doesn’t produce waste. Everything becomes part of the infinite food chain…an acorn doesn’t become another acorn, it becomes a tree, or food for an animal that produces fertilizer to aid another plant or becomes food for another animal. Nature is adaptive and flexible.

The Nylon 6,6 recycling system itself was designed to be flexible, and can be adapted as technologies change or as the feedstock from the marketplace shifts. The system was designed according to present market conditions and the types of materials being used today, but is flexible enough to change as conditions change.

What does a flexible system like this mean for the marketplace? It helps educate the marketplace to use resources more wisely, and to harvest existing products as raw materials. Soon, simply diverting products from landfills will give way to mining raw materials from landfills. Old buildings become the raw materials for new construction. And, as long as business and industry continue to work together and share innovations, the potential for recycling and recycled materials will be as infinite as nature.

How it Works

Reclaimed carpet is transported to the Reentry 2.0 facility in LaGrange, Ga., and sorted according to fiber and backing type.

PVC-backed carpet and tile fiber is separated from the backing using the exclusive “clean separation” process. The backing is then sent for grinding and agglomeration and then used in the InterfaceFLOR Cool Blue Machine to make new backing.

Broadloom carpet fiber is separated and then the backing is “opened,” a process, which pulls the woven fiber structure apart, allowing the latex and dirt to fall away. Fiber is then baled, suitable for use in engineered resins, automotive non-wovens and other uses. The calcium carbonate from the latex that is recovered can be put back into new latex compounds and other applications. oOher polymeric backing systems can be pelletized and offered into their respective recycled plastic markets.

Fiber Recycling

Nylon 6,6 fiber is sent to universal fiber systems where it is incorporated into new nylon 6,6 for interface.

Nylon 6 fiber can be sold for recycling into new nylon 6, or sold into the recycled plastics market for use in engineered resins.

PET (polyethylene terephthalate, from recycled plastics) and PP (polypropylene) are sold into their respective recycle markets for multiple potential uses.