New identities for recycled products

Most of the items you toss in your recycling bin are reincarnated as similar products: That Coke can becomes a new aluminum can, a glass jelly jar becomes another glass jar, and old newspapers help form new newsprint. But here are a few uses you might not have thought of:

Plastic:

Drainage pipes

Cassette casings

Filler for pillows and sleeping bags

Carpet

Park benches

Backpacks

Plastic lumber

Paper:

Insulation and padding

Flooring

Gypsum wallboard

Flower pots

Paper egg cartons

Glass:

Fiberglass

"Glasphalt" (for highway construction)

Aluminum foil:

Lawn furniture

License plates

Steel cans:

Automobiles

Clothes dryers

Refrigerators

As more and more plastic is recycled, scientists and manufacturers are working to develop new products made from recycled plastic.

But what do you do with the mountain of carpeting – 2.5 million tons of home and commercial – that winds up in US landfills each year?

Already, a handful of manufacturers are remanufacturing old carpet – converting it into new carpet or turning it into Polarfleece, car parts, and plastic lumber. The process reuses the plastic resins found in much modern synthetic carpeting.

Besides unburdening landfills, remanufacturing holds potential for dramatic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

Currently, only about 4 percent of discarded carpeting is being recycled; another 1 or 2 percent is cleaned and reused as carpeting. But thanks to a new program, there is hope that as much as 40 percent of old carpeting will be recycled or reused within 10 years.

The new initiative, called the National Carpet Recycling Agreement, is an effort, similar to ones in Europe, designed to foster manufacturer responsibility throughout a product's life cycle. It's called product stewardship.

The purpose of the agreement, says Sherry Enzler, who worked more than two years to help hammer out the agreement, is to establish an alliance that can recover large quantities of the carpet stripped from America's floors over the next 10 years. Ultimately, if the agreement is renewed, the goal could be a 90 percent recovery rate, assuming national participation.

Ms. Enzler is director of the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance. The carpeting issue came to her department's attention several years ago after a waste-sort study – in which people actually dug through garbage – indicated that 5 percent of the trash entering Minnesota's landfills is carpeting.

Carpet manufacturers are central to this recovery effort. They have formed an independent group, the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), to draft an action plan and monitor progress in carpet recovery.

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