Desso ‘C2C’ carpet recycling boost for UAE

United Arab Emirates – European carpet manufacturer Desso has embraced the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept and is producing a carpet tile range with a polyolefin-based backing. This means that up to 97% of the materials used have been assessed as either optimal or tolerable according to the C2C criteria, and can be reused or recycled.

It is now hoped this innovation will reduce the pressure on landfill sites in the United Arab Emirates; in Dubai, for example, landfills are expected to have reached their capacity in less than seven years from now. ‘Contributing to that problem are the millions of square metres of worn-out carpet that is thrown away every year,’ asserts Andre Dulka, Desso’s regional director for the Middle East, Africa & India. The company is the first carpet manufacturer in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to adopt the cradle-to-cradle design, he claims. Recent figures indicate that, in Dubai alone, there is 9.2 million square metres of office space with potentially another 1.6 million square metres coming on line this year. ‘Clearly not all of that space is occupied, but imagine that amount of carpet being incinerated or dumped over the coming years as worn carpet is replaced, creating yet more waste management headaches,’ says Dulka. The new range, called Desso EcoBase, has already achieved C2C ‘Silver Certification’. The carpet relies on Desso’s new separation technique, Refinity, which enables the company to separate the yarn and other fibres from the backing, thereby producing two main material streams which can be recycled. According to Dulka, Desso is now able to take back all types of used carpet, except for those containing PVC, for safe recycling or reuse. ‘By sourcing positively defined raw materials, introducing new manufacturing methods and collecting used carpets from clients, we are doing everything we can to achieve a closed-loop process,’ states Dulka. Desso aims to collect 50 000 tonnes of post-consumer carpet by 2020. For more information, visit: www.dessohome.eu Source: AMEinfo