Everything Can Be Recycled, Even Carpet?
September 2nd, 2010
A few days ago, Michelle, my little step-sister ran to me and told me that her teacher showed them that carpet is recyclable.
– No it can not be recycled, I replied thoughtlessly . It might be possible to reuse it, but doubtlessly not possible to be recycled.
That didn’t make her stop arguing with me and even said that those carpet recyclers had their own association in U.S.A.. I decided to go on Google and checked it out. As it appear, the little girl was amazingly correct. There is truly an association of carpet recyclers in America. And there was even a construction waste recycler in my area that handle such items. I found out Recymobilier and Recyconstruction in my neighborhood : they recycle all appliances, furniture, electronic waste and construction waste. I spoke to an environment specialist, Leo, and he was demonstrating to me all the things that are possible to recycle as of now.
- Carpet is shredded and recycled for its plastic content, it could either end up as a new carpet or almost anything else that is made of plastic.
- Wood waste are shipped to an electric producer, they use wood to generate power. It is a smoke-free combustion process that do not impact climate changes.
- Sheetrock are passed through some machines and transformed into powder, paper as well as paint are taken off, and the remaining gypsum will either serve in agriculture or serve to make new gypsum walls.
And it goes on and on for each variety of material. It is incredibly wonderful to understand that we are at that point. To those expecting to earn money by selling their old chair or drywall, I would like to add that there is a fee to recycle those items.
- We used to be exclusively in the business of e-waste recycling a while ago. However, since at one point we were only recycling the items that we were accepting because there was no value to sell it, we had to put a recycling fee to some items that were more expensive to us to properly recycle than to send to landfill. Since we understood that people were interested in making a difference to the planet and were agreeing to pay a minimal fee to cover our handling of the products, we decided that the time was good to add more recycling services that couldn’t be sustainable by their content to provide an another option than landfill.
- Fortunately, the service received an exceptional feedback, as it came to life when people realized about our footprint on the environment, personally or on a business level. Industries and building managers are more than aware of the green movement, reason why more and more building managers are fighting to become LEED certified.