As the United Kingdom tries to find ways to divert more rubbish away from landfills it is important that each industry get a close look. Although recent efforts have been aimed at household recycling, business and industrial waste accounts for most of the rubbish that ends up in landfills. This has led the UK to look for new and innovative ways to increase the recycling rates of businesses. One area in which the United Kingdom has been way behind is the recycling of carper, where only about two percent of the carpet thrown away each year is recycled. This leads to a large amount of this material ending up in landfills, which is exactly what the UK is trying to avoid. That is why the industry is excited about a new technique that will make it easier to recycle carpet.
Axion consulting, a company which operates out of London, is currently conducting tests on a method that hopes to be able to turn polypropylene carpets into material that can be re-used. The technique turns the carpets into plastic polymer that can be used in a number of different products. Axion hopes that this method will act as a stimulus to the struggling carpet recycling industry. The idea was started by Carpet Recycling UK as a means of finding uses for post consumer carpets, especially in cases where large buildings are being torn down, leaving a lot of excess carpet.
The UK estimates that over five hundred thousand tonnes of carpet is thrown away or incinerated each year, which makes this method a potentially important one.
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