Recycling Carpet Could Save Millions of Barrels of Oil

Four billion pounds of old carpet get dumped every year in the United States, and five pounds of oil goes into producing a single pound of nylon. New recycling methods could save all that oil by producing new nylon from old with little energy cost.

January 4, 2011, 8am PST | Tim Halbur

The numbers are staggering: according to Modular Carpet Recycling (MCR), a startup out of Delaware, each person consumes about 10 pounds of carpet each year (even with the construction slump).

Michael Kanellos writes that MCR "has come up with a precipitation process to efficiently recycle nylon fibers in old carpet, a material we're swimming in even with the stall in construction.

Four billion pounds of carpet enter waste streams in the U.S. each year, says CEO Ron Simonetti. Five pounds of oil go into a single pound of nylon, so annually the U.S. could curb oil exports by millions of barrels via recycling."

Full Story:

A New Source of Oil: Old Carpet

Published on Monday, January 3, 2011 in greentechmedia