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From dusty old carpet tiles
to pure, valuable yarn
French multinational Tarkett recently revealed a new way to recycle carpets at its
facility in Waalwijk, the Netherlands. The company is now able to separate the
two principal components of carpet tiles – yarn and backing – while retaining more
than 95% yarn purity.
with ECONYL yarn delivers up to 84%
CO2 savings compared to incinera-
tion. The recyclable tiles have lifespan
of between 10 and 15 years, similar to
traditional flooring.
Another unique feature is that each
tile has a distinctive marking on the
back to indicate both the date of pro-
duction and the location. ‘It also helps
identify what is inside that particular
carpet tile, down to the molecule,’
Barthélemy explains.
Benefits of respinning
An entire EcoBase-backed tile with
PA6 yarn is recyclable. Both the yarn
and backing are recycled without loss
of quality; used yarn becomes new
yarn and used backing becomes new
backing. This means the product is
cradle-to-cradle verified. The two
materials are sorted, cleaned, pro-
cessed and baled individually at the
A high purity level is vital in ensuring
that the resulting polyamide 6 (PA6)
yarn can be processed by Tarkett’s
Italian recycling partner, Aquafil, into
regenerated ECONYL nylon yarn.
Tarkett has invested around EUR 15
million in the carpet recycling project.
An important reason for the invest-
ment was increasing the capacity of
the Waalwijk plant in order to produce
more of the company’s patented
EcoBase carpet tile. This features a
special kind of backing, first launched
in 2010, which was designed for easy
disassembly and recycling.
The recycling unit at Tarkett’s facility is
able to handle five tiles per minute.
‘It’s still a learning curve,’ admits com-
pany ceo Fabrice Barthélemy. ‘We are
working on increasing throughput.’
Recycling EcoBase-backed carpet tiles
a u T h o r Kirstin Linnenkoper
Tarkett ceo Fabrice Barthélemy and Aquafil ceo Giulio Bonazzi.
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