Web Exclusive: On the Path to Sustainability
by David Harless
November 12, 2007
Shaw’s Evergreen facility looks to the future with its cradle-to-cradle approach to carpet manufacturing.
Less than a year after opening last February, Shaw’s Evergreen Nylon Recycling facility in Augusta, Georgia is successfully achieving the company’s vision of producing a truly sustainable product — carpeting that can be recycled back into the same product over and over with no loss of aesthetic or performance properties.
Shaw acquired the Evergreen facility from Honeywell and DSM in April 2006, and since then the company has invested millions of dollars upgrading its equipment and operations. The changes have improved operational performance in our key focus areas: safety and health of employees, environmental stewardship, energy reduction, and production yield.
When the switches were flipped on its machinery earlier this year, Evergreen embarked on its own journey towards “cradle-to-cradle,” much like other initiatives taking place within Shaw. The goal: to bring a one-of-a-kind, closed-loop process to carpet fiber manufacturing that mirrors nature’s own pattern of recycling and renewal.
The Evergreen facility has emerged as a flagship initiative in the Shaw Green Edge, which is comprised of hundreds of environmental actions with positive environmental, economic and social implications in place throughout the entire company.
Evergreen Recycling Program
At Evergreen, Shaw recycles selected carpet waste — post-industrial discarded material that comes from the manufacturing process; and post-consumer carpet waste — material that has already been installed and used in homes and businesses, and is now being replaced.
Evergreen is equipped to recycle both commercial and residential carpet fiber, regardless of the manufacturer. Nylon 6 carpet is the type used at Evergreen because it can be recycled using the cradle to cradle process. This is the most sustainable option and is the essence of a closed-loop recycling method. Although not all carpet fiber can be recycled in this way, Shaw products made with Nylon 6 fibers were designed specifically for cradle-to-cradle recycling, and can be used over and over in perpetuity.
This doesn’t mean that carpet not of Nylon 6 fiber is useless. Shaw sends these types of carpet to its other recycling facilities where one of two processes is applied to the discarded material, each helping to reduce landfill waste:
- Down-cycling. Adds another life cycle for used material. Less sustainable products that can’t be returned to carpet but still have useable life are recycled in this way; they are sent to another industry for use in a different form.
- Waste-to-energy. The process of producing energy through the combustion of solid waste in specifically designed power plants. Shaw applies a waste-to-energy gasification process at its Plant 81 in Dalton, Georgia. The plant uses Shaw’s post-production waste in place of traditional fossil fuel boiler technology to produce steam, and diverts 44 million pounds of landfill waste a year while improving plant emissions and conserving natural resources.
The Cradle-to-Cradle Recycling Process
Shaw’s vision is to further expand a nationwide carpet collection system to supply post-consumer carpet to the Evergreen facility. A major portion of the carpet collected will be converted into caprolactam, the raw material used to make the Nylon 6 fiber used in residential and commercial carpet. The carpet fiber that can’t be turned into caprolactam will be down-cycled or sent a waste-to-energy facility.
The plant’s de-polymerization technology essentially takes the Nylon 6 fibers back to a molecular state. The ability to de-polymerize Nylon 6 contributes to its sustainability, allowing the caprolactam to be recovered again and again without degrading the material.
Here’s how it works:
- The collected carpet fiber is ground into small pieces and put into a pressure vessel;
- Using design temperature, pressure, and steam, the Nylon 6 is depolymerized to caprolactam monomer and separated from the rest of the carpet in vapor form;
- The caprolactam is condensed into a liquid, purified, and transported to a Shaw Nylon 6 polymerization facility.
The recycled output is chemically equivalent to virgin caprolactam, which is made from petroleum products. Shaw then uses this chemical reclaim to produce, for example, its ANSO and Eco Solution Q-branded nylon with post-consumer recycled content, products that eventually can be de-polymerized and returned to the manufacturing process over and over again — keeping the materials in a closed-loop system.
Who Agrees with Us?
Because Shaw as a company has embraced the notion of sustainability using cradle-to-cradle as our path, we strive to set progressive environmental goals that aim to minimize our impact on the environment. Most of our clients — residential and commercial architects, designers and builders — are in sync with our vision, and are ardent supporters of our practices, processes and products, especially as they relate to the Evergreen facility.
In fact, if you are reading this publication, you are probably one of our advocates — someone who is interested in saving the earth, in cradle-to-cradle design and in keeping post-consumer materials out of our landfills. You want to “do the right thing” without sacrificing design or quality. Global warming, off-gassing or energy minimization are of interest to you. And, you’re likely to pursue LEED certified projects.
In the end, the Evergreen facility really defines our vision and philosophy about sustainability—reducing or eliminating the negative environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of products, from the acquisition of raw materials through end of life.
This vision is one of the reasons I signed up for this work — I am very proud of what we do here at Evergreen because I believe it is unique and unmatched by anyone.
Sustainability, and the work we do at the Evergreen facility, is Shaw’s gift to the future.
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