When it comes to flooring, for many, carpet is the favoured choice. Available in a range of colours, textures and pile thickness, carpet has a lot of advantages over its competition. One downfall, however, is its reputation for being hard to recycle. Experienced in all things carpet, Cormar Carpet Company has been working to change that. Managing Director Ian Ford explained more, in an exclusive interview with Inside Sustainability. Report by Imogen Ward.
Carpet, thanks to its multipolymer structure, is renowned for being difficult when it comes to recycling. Cormar Carpet Company is determined to change this, one polymer at a time.
“Carpet is constructed using a number o f different fibres, including polypropylene, which is actually a plastic,” Managing Director Ian Ford explained. “These then must be separated and processed for recycling, which is often seen as more trouble than it’s worth.
“Cormar Carpets manufactures all its non-wool carpets to be mono-polymer.
Using just polypropylene in the manufacture of our yarn and backing makes the end-of-life process much easier.”
Cormar Carpets was born in 1956 from the roots of its predecessor Greenwood & Coope, when the company transitioned from the production of felts to carpets. With its head office, carpet finishing line and northern distribution centre all located in the original premises in Brookhouse Mill, Lancashire, the company now has two additional sites: Holme Mill where the tufting process is completed, and a southern distribution centre in Hemel Hempstead.
Green improvement:
Cormar Carpets recycles all its store carpet samples once the businesses are finished with them. The company also returns all its packaging waste to the supplier, so it can be reprocessed.
Inspiring the industry
Sustainability has been a priority for Cormar Carpets for many years, and, as a founding member of Carpet Recycling UK (the only membership association dedicated to helping the UK carpet sector improve its sustainability), Cormar Carpets has been working hard to ensure that the entire industry makes a difference.
“As an industry, we don’t want to be disadvantaged by our lack of sustainability,” Mr Ford explained. “That’s why it is so impor-
tant that we are at the forefront of the latest developments in carpet recycling. It would be remiss to sit on the back burner and wait for change to happen to us.”
As the government looks to introduce an extended producer responsibility scheme that will affect the carpet industry, Cormar Carpets is collaborating with Carpet Recycling UK to protect the industry from potential penalisation.
“EPR schemes tend to come with an element of tax, and we want to make sure t hat doesn’t have any detrimental impacts on the carpet industry,” Mr Ford continued; “especially when other types of flooring are also manufactured using plastic. It would be unfair if those in the carpet industry were to lose trade to other flooring that is just as unsustainable.”
Innovate Recycle UK
Cormar Carpets is also working closely with Innovate Recycle UK (developer of the clean, green and unique mechanical extraction process dedicated to waste carpets), to keep its post-industrial carpet from entering landfill.
Having opened the UK’s first true carpet recycling facility in the summer of 2023, Innovate Recycle has been busy implementing its patented process to extract polypropylene and calcium carbonate from Cormar Carpets’ waste product. The extracted polypropylene is turned into chips, which can then be re-melted and re-extruded to create injection moulded parts for the automotive industry.
“Although the process is not refined enough to reprocess the chips into carpet, Innovate Recycle is producing excellent non-carpet products,” said Mr Ford. “This is because different coloured carpets are processed together, resulting in a dark grey polypropylene chip every time. Virgin polypropylene is always white, making it susceptible to the addition of colour.”
Making a difference
Keen to find more ways to put its waste carpet to good use, Cormar Carpets has been looking into other landfill alternatives. So far, its carpets have been shredded for equine arenas, burned by the waste from the energy sector and used in the cement manufacturing process.
The company also maintains open communication with its yarn – primary backing and secondary backing suppliers to ensure these materials are made using the same polymer.
“We work hard to guarantee our raw materials are of higher quality, to make sure the end-of-life process will be as simple and pain-free as possible,” Mr Ford said.
Cormar Carpets has long preferred the use of single polymer because it produces a higher quality textile. By choosing quality over cost, the company has further benefited from the recent progression of single-polymer carpet recycling.
Also on offer at Cormar Carpets is woolbased carpet, which accounts for 30% of its overall carpet production. This product can be created as a mixed blend with up to 50% polypropylene, or entirely from wool. Although the inclusion of a mixed blend makes it more difficult to recycle, the product features significantly less plastic than the alternative non-wool options.
Implementing change
With the future of carpet recycling looking up, Mr Ford believes greater consumer awareness is needed to really promote positive progression: “At the moment, the only way to discover a carpet’s make up is by scanning the fibres. This is a real labour intensive ( and unnecessarily timely) process. As an industry, we should be labelling our carpets and communicating to customers what the labelling means. By doing this, it will make the entire end- of-life process more efficient.”
Until then, there is currently 480,000 tonnes of post-domestic carpet being pulled up every year, which needs repurposing. Cormar Carpets hopes that there will be a solution for this soon: in the meantime, the company is currently developing another more sustainable product that is expected to hit the market before the end of this year.
“It is possible to recycle plastic bottles into fibre that can be used to manufacture
carpet,” Mr Ford explained. “Of course, it is still early days and cannot currently be recycled again, but we intend to incorporate this recycled content into a new carpet, effectively extending the life of the plastic bottles.
“We are really looking forward to what the future holds for the carpet industry; and the fact that it is actively taking onboard the message of sustainability and recycling as an industry is incredibly exciting.” n
