The worldwide demand for carpet is rising at five percent annually, with production projected to reach 18.6 billion square meters per year by 2016, EU’s Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) said based on the information from EUROC2C CARPETCHAINS project coordinator Marco van Bergen.

The statement says good environmental performance and sustainability are now key priorities for the burgeoning carpet industry.

To meet the challenge, the EU-funded project EUROC2C CARPETCHAINS (‘Towards closed loop chains in Europe’) has set up a pilot carpet return and recycling programme in cooperation with flooring manufacturers, flooring contractors and waste collection and reprocessing companies.

“To close the production cycle, it is essential to be able to take back and process old carpets,” van Bergen said, according to the statement.

“Traditionally, the carpet manufacturing sector has operated in a linear fashion - virgin raw materials are transformed into yarn, backing and other elements used to make carpet. Later, at the end of its life, discarded carpet is simply thrown into municipal incinerators, cement kilns or landfill,” van Bergen said.

The process is, by definition, unsustainable, as modern carpets are largely made from synthetic, fossil fuel-derived materials, harmful to the atmosphere when burned, and non-renewable, he added.

“Moreover, we are living in a resource-constrained world where the linear economy of ‘take, make and dispose’ is unsustainable. There is a better way: reshaping businesses so that products are made to be made again in a circular fashion as seen in nature,” according to van Bergen.

Hence, EUROC2C CARPETCHAINS researchers set up an innovative pilot plant at Desso headquarters for the sorting and separation of carpet waste. One of the key results of the project was the recovery of polyamide 6 carpet fibres into new polyamide 6 again and again.

Thus, Polyamide 6 can be re-used for the production of new yarn, known as ECONYL yarn. The pilot plant is continuing to research on further improvements including efficiency upgrades.

EUROC2C CARPETCHAINS received about ?800,000 in EU funding and was completed in July 2013.