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A NEWSLETTER TO EXPAND MARKETS FOR RECYCLED MATERIALS

Bringing carpet recycling home: LinkUp and Seattle Public Utilities partner to increase local recycling efforts

LinkUp alumni partner, Terry Gillis of Recovery 1, Inc., smiles for a photo with Frank Endrenyi of Mohawk Carpets after a carpet recycling business roundtable meeting in Seattle.

Each year 50,000 tons of carpet waste is generated in King County, and of that only a small percentage is believed to be recycled. In August, King County LinkUp and Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) came together with other government and academic organizations to convene a Carpet Recycling Workgroup. The Workgroup is working on creating the Northwest Carpet Recycling Strategy to bring local carpet processing capacity to the region and support development of local markets for carpet-derived commodities.

In addition to King County and City of Seattle, the Carpet Recycling Workgroup members include representatives from Washington State University, University of Washington, Western Washington University, City of Spokane, Snohomish County, City of Tacoma, Washington State Departments of Ecology and Commerce, Portland Metro, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Canada’s Ministry of Environment.

“The Workgroup is a diverse group of local and state governments and research institutions that will develop a set of tactics to establish carpet processing capacity in the Northwest and facilitate development of local end markets for the recycled materials from carpet,” said Seattle Public Utilities’ workgroup co-coordinator Shirli Axelrod.

There is already a national effort to increase carpet recycling. Since 2002, the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) has worked to reduce carpet waste with the goal of diverting 40 percent of carpet waste from landfills by 2012.

Carpet recycling efforts have potential for improvement. Based on CARE’s annual report, 2,821,000 tons of carpet was discarded in 2008 in the U.S., and of this total, only 122,000 tons or 4.3 percent were recycled. It is this figure, which caught the attention of SPU and LinkUp and encouraged current efforts to position the Pacific Northwest to do its part to reduce carpet waste.

Carpet is largely made up of petroleum-based materials including nylon and polypropylene, which have various market applications. Recycled carpet can be use in fiber for new carpet, carpet backing and carpet pads, as well as textiles, auto parts and other molded plastic products, wood-plastic composites, and even as a coal fuel substitute.

The Northwest has started taking strides of its own in carpet waste reduction. Tacoma-based Recovery 1 ships four carpet types to out-of-state recycling facilities. The Northwest Carpet Recycling Strategy hopes to build on the significant local and national interest to make carpet recycling a reality in the Northwest region.

In September and October, the Carpet Recycling Workgroup sponsored two business roundtables meetings to collect input from stakeholders on what should be addressed in the Northwest Carpet Recycling Strategy.

The first roundtable, in late September, focused on carpet removal, collection and sorting. The second roundtable, in mid-October, focused on end markets and demand-side processing.

“We have had phenomenal response to our outreach efforts,” said Kris Beatty, LinkUp program manager. “There is a tremendous level of interest in carpet recycling in the Pacific Northwest, and we see great potential not only for increased waste diversion but also for the development of new and successful end markets for this abundant resource.”

The Northwest Carpet Recycling Strategy is expected to be completed in January 2010, with implementation to follow. Learn more about the Northwest Carpet Recycling Strategy Project.

King County focus

Partially demolished building to be loaded in an intermodal container and taken to a landfill by rail.

Construction and Demolition Materials Characterization Study helps guide direction of King County recycling programs and waste reduction strategies.

Since 1990, the King County Solid Waste Division (SWD) has monitored the county’s waste to answer crucial questions: What is the composition of materials generated within the county, where does this waste come from, and where does it go? The answers are important to planning and designing targeted material waste prevention and recycling programs. To gather information on waste generated by construction and demolition (C&D) projects, King County commissioned the King County 2007-2008 Construction and Demolition Materials Characterization Study.

The study characterized loads at private C&D transfer stations and processing facilities. It was intended to provide statistically significant data on the composition of materials generated via C&D activities within King County, identify materials in the disposed C&D material stream that are potentially recyclable, and identify materials during load processing. The data also helps the county understand seasonal and sub-stream differences so that targeted diversion programs can be designed, and provides a benchmark for continued long-term measurement of the C&D material stream.

“The information gathered in waste characterization studies like this is critical in helping us set long-term waste reduction goals,” said Kris Beatty, LinkUp program manager. “It helps programs like LinkUp determine which materials need the most attention for waste reduction and diversion and creating new end markets.”

Each year, LinkUp looks at which materials are most prevalent in the waste stream and determines how to focus its work for the year. Current priority materials for LinkUp are asphalt roofing shingles, carpet and mattresses.

The 2007-2008 study emphasizes the need to divert C&D materials, such as asphalt shingles from the waste stream. Asphalt shingles was among the most prevalent materials found in C&D waste. Composition roofing, of which asphalt shingles is one type, was the most prevalent material component in the C&D waste stream with 175,000 tons disposed.

The materials were broken down into five categories—sub-streams, activity types, load types, hauler types and vehicle types.

From the activity types, new construction projects were the largest generators by weight in the stream of material disposed at transfer stations and processed at C&D recycling facilities (approximately 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively). Remodel projects (23.2 percent) and demolition projects (22.9 percent) each generated nearly one quarter of the material disposed at transfer stations. Remodel projects were nearly one quarter (22.8 percent) of loads processed at C&D recycling facilities.

Read the King County 2007-2008 Construction and Demolition Materials Characterization Study.

Industry Voice

Mattresses find new life through recycling program with unexpected roots.
When it comes to mattress recycling, Washington state correctional facilities probably aren’t the first places that come to mind. In fact, one such facility is the only local entity in the central Puget Sound area to recycle mattresses that would otherwise go to the landfill. LinkUp spoke with Tom Williamson, manager of Correctional Industries Mattress Recycling Program, to learn more about this unique effort.

Q: How did Washington’s correctional facilities get involved with mattress recycling?

TW: The Mattress Recycling Program is run through Correctional Industries which is a statewide program that operates 34 businesses within the state’s correctional facilities, and offers on-the-job training to offenders. Mattress recycling is our newest program. We look for business opportunities that won’t put others out of business. There are very few organizations doing mattress recycling in the U.S., so we took it on. We partnered with St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County in Eugene, Ore.; they have been doing mattress recycling for a number of years.

Q: Where do the mattresses you recycle come from?

TW: We are currently collecting mattresses from landfills and recycling events. We recently collected more than 250 mattresses from a recycling event in Federal Way. Of course, we recycle old mattresses from within the correctional facilities. By recycling mattresses from Department of Corrections’ facilities we are saving the agency approximately $100,000 a year in disposal fees.

Q: What happens to a mattress once Correctional Industries collects it for recycling?

TW: We bring mattresses in and put them on a spin table we created. The tops are cut off, then we separate the materials—cotton fibers, polyurethane foam, wood and steel. We have a machine that separates the wood frame from the mattress springs. These materials are then baled and sent to St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County who sells them to a recycler and reimburses Correctional Industries. The wood used in mattresses is clean, therefore it is high grade. That material in particular is being processed by Tacoma-based Recovery 1 which in turn sells it to an Oregon company that produces high quality paper pulp to sell to paper mills; it’s a very high end use of that material. The mattress recycling process allows us to train our offender workers on a variety of equipment, which helps them learn valuable skills they can use to get a job when they are released.

Q: Does Correctional Industries expect to expand its Mattress Recycling Program to increase the number of mattresses diverted from the landfill?

TW: We hope to open two more locations—Vancouver and Monroe—within the next year.

More information on the CI Mattress Recycling Program is available on the Correctional Industires Web site.

Fast facts

Composition Summary —Overall Transfer Station Disposed C&D

King County Waste Monitoring Program: 2007/2008 Construction and Demolition Waste Characterization Study, Final Report, February 2009.

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