Eliminating The Inevitable: Sustainable Carpets vs. Recyclable
“In the ‘Green’ saturated consumer goods arena, conscientious people are not satisfied with something only being recycled. Is a product sustainable?” Eric Kadlec of Walgenmeyer’s Flooring located on Stoughton Road in Madison.
A sustainable product, by definition is one which is used again and again, and is not reused, only to eventually end up in a landfill. In Walgenmeyer’s show room, about 70% of the carpet products are sustainable. In other words, they will not end up in a landfill. “Not that recycling is bad,” adds Kadlec.“However, one has to ask what the end goal is. Is it to delay the delivery of an old carpet to the landfill, or avoid that step completely? That’s where offering the Shaw line of flooring is so gratifying. More than 70% of the product we offer is sustainable.” With traditional recycling, an old carpet would be ‘down cycled’, or broken down for use as a component of another product, which, in time, will be landfill bound. With the sustainable carpet line offered by Shaw the production/use cycle is a closed loop.
CHARACTERIZATION OF A SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT
Kadlec’s characterization of a sustainable carpet product includes:
? Raw material from carpet
? Carpet is manufactured
? Carpet installed, used, worn and removed
? Collected and shipped for breakdown (type 6 fibered carpets)
? Reconstituted into raw material for carpet “A wonderful aspect of this type of product is that it doesn’t even require a compromise for the consumer,” according to Kadlec. The sustainable product delivers the following;
? Aesthetically equal or better than standard products on the market today
? Wears the same or better to other alternatives
? The consumer gets a competitively priced product — they don’t have to pay a premium for being a responsible and doing the right thing with their purchase.
Shaw Sustainable Facts:
? Shaw’s post-consumer collection system keeps up to 300 million pounds of carpet from landfills each year.
? In Shaw’s manufacturing process, greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced by 45% since 2000.
? *Evergreen Nylon Recycling (part of Shaw’s process) helps to save enough energy to run thousands of homes each year.
? *Evergreen Nylon Recycling (part of Shaw’s process) helps to save enough oil to produce millions of additional gallons of gasoline annually.
“What could be better? Aesthetically, functionally and environmentally, Shaw carpets deliver the best possible choices on all three fronts. These are the choices I love to provide to my customers.” Eric Kadlec Walgenmeyer’s Flooring.
