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Staff Photo by Allison Kwesell/Chattanooga Times Free Press - A detail is shown of carpet being rolled at Beaulieu of America, a carpet factory in Dalton, Ga. The company, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ships carpet all over the United States and abroad.
Eight years ago, carpet industry leaders set an ambitious goal of cutting the amount of carpet going into America’s landfills by 40 percent by 2012.
Since 2002, the industry has recycled more than 1.6 billion pounds of carpet, or about one-fourth of the initial target.
California legislative leaders want the industry to do far more, at least in California. But the West Coast legislative initiative isn’t sitting well in the carpet capital of Dalton, Ga.
Werner Braun, president of the Carpet and Rug Institute in Dalton, said the legislation to require half of the carpet sold in California to be recycled by 2014 “will place additional burdens on an industry that is already under severe economic pressure and is already working voluntarily to meet this challenge.”
“What we don’t need is legislation that would potentially jeopardize manufacturing jobs in your state,” Braun wrote in a letter to California State Assembly Speaker John A. Perez.
Perez, a Los Angeles Democrat, is pushing what would be the first state-specific recycling mandate for carpet. The proposed bill would require carpet manufacturers to develop plans to recycle up to 70 percent of the carpet disposed of in California by 2017.
“In my own district, carpet recycling has created hundreds of good-paying green jobs,” Perez said. “But we can create even more of these green jobs if we boost our efforts to recycle and reuse waste carpets.”
Voluntary effort
CALIFORNIA PLAN
Legislation proposed in California (AB 2398) would:
* Require carpet manufacturers to prepare a plan to show how they will take responsibility for collecting waste carpet instead of sending it to landfills;
* Require targets to be set for recycling 50 percent of carpet in California by 2014 and 70 percent of carpet by 2017;
* Prohibit manufacturers from selling carpet in California after 2012 unless they have prepared a plan to meet the targets.
The Carpet America Recovery Effort launched in 2002 by the carpet industry and state and federal regulators is a voluntary effort to develop ways to reuse more of the carpet now bound for landfills.
Major carpetmakers are using old carpet for energy or to make other products. Companies such as Interface Inc., an Atlanta-based carpetmaker that sold $226.6 million of carpet in the second quarter of 2010, recycles old carpet to make modular carpet.
Frank Hurd, a vice president of the Carpet and Rug Institute who is chairman of the Carpet American Recovery Effort, said carpet is a type of soft plastic that can be reused in a variety of industries. But he said the economic downturn not only has hurt new carpet sales but has reduced the value of recycled carpet.
Hurd said the industry is looking at new strategies to keep boosting the amount of carpet recycled rather than landfilled.
“We’re hopeful we can work out an agreement with the sponsors of this legislation to expand our recycling, but to do so in a manner that doesn’t jeopardize more carpet production jobs,” he said.
Perez said state studies estimate that 1.3 million tons of carpet are dumped in California landfills every year, or 3.2 percent of all solid waste.
"Perez, a Los Angeles Democrat, is pushing what would be the first state-specific recycling mandate for carpet" As usual, those good democrats are doing great things to ultimately destroy another industry. BO and Pelosi are so very proud of liberals like Perez.
If carpet accounts for more than 3 percent of all solid wastes in California -- and likely even more in other states -- there is a public cost to such disposal and those responsible for such government expenses should pay an appropriate amount, whatever that might be. Anything else is an industry subsidy and distorts the marketplace for other individuals and businesses.
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