Recycling for your old office

Posted by: Garrett K.

I was inspired after reading this article in the SF Chronicle. So many times I saw an old office get gutted with all materials getting hauled off to the dump. Now many of those materials, including the carpet, can be recycled or donated. This article suggests some great resources.

Ellen Raynor doesn't have a problem getting 100,000 pounds of used carpet in the door of her warehouse each week.

It's getting it out the door that's the challenge.

Raynor is owner of San Francisco Carpet Recycling, an 8-month-old company that collects, sorts and finds buyers
for used carpeting. With carpet recycling still in its infancy, Raynor's is one of about 50 such businesses
throughout the country and the only one in the Bay Area.

And like her peers, Raynor has found her biggest hurdle isn't procuring used carpet but finding companies that
are interested in buying it, breaking it down and turning it into new products.

"Finding buyers is really the competitive part of this industry - proprietary information," Raynor said.

Old carpet is just a sliver of the overall waste stream, 1.6 percent of all trash collected in San Francisco by
Norcal Waste Systems. But that still adds up to more than 16 million pounds each year in San Francisco and 5 billion
pounds nationally. And historically, nearly all of that used carpet has gone into landfills.

"It's a big deal because of its weight, and because it doesn't break down," said Ken Stewart, operations manager for
San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, Norcal's recycling division.

In 2002, after negotiations with federal officials and environmental groups, carpet manufacturers set a goal of recycling
40 percent of America's discarded carpeting by 2012. They formed a trade group to promote recycling.

Since then, the number of local carpet collectors has risen from five to more than 50 - including Raynor's operation.

Raynor herself was an unlikely candidate to become the Bay Area's carpet recycling diva. A software industry veteran,
she left a product management job at Pitney Bowes to enter the carpet business, first by buying a Truckee carpet store
with friends and then by starting San Francisco Carpet Recycling.

"I wanted to be more of a part of the community," said Raynor, 37, who has about a half dozen employees in her Bayview
warehouse. "Today my trucking company is a block away. My pallet company is a block away. The hardware store knows me.
That's very different from flying all over (to software clients), where only the airport shuttle driver knows you."

Raynor collects used carpet from Bay Area carpet retailers, hotels and other businesses, and Norcal's transfer station.
Her staff uses handheld spectrometers - the size of portable vacuums - to identify whether the fibers are made from nylon,
 polypropylene, PET plastic or wool. The backing is often a different material from the fibers.

"Carpet is made from different things, so a separation process has to happen to turn it into raw material for other
products," Raynor said.

The carpet is sorted, baled and stacked. Then comes the hard part: finding takers.

Shaw Industries, a division of Berkshire Hathaway that is the world's largest carpet manufacturer, operates a recycling
plant in Georgia that can reformulate one particular fiber called Type 6 Nylon into new carpeting. Raynor and other
recyclers send some inventory to Shaw, but it can handle only part of their supply.

So Raynor spends a lot of time exploring other potential uses such as plastics manufacturing. Some synthetic carpet ends
up being made into carpet pads. Other carpet is melted into pellets and turned into plastic paving stones or automobile
parts.

"The carpet industry has an appetite for about 5 percent of what is discarded right now," Raynor said. "So I'm focusing
on the plastics industry. My focus is market development and finding end uses for material. But it's a lot more
complicated than 'Do you want some aluminum?' "

For now, the economics of carpet recycling remain challenging. Raynor looks for the best price for her bales of used
carpet, but that doesn't necessarily cover her costs.

One out-of-town buyer offered her 6 cents per pound, while her shipping costs were 7 cents per pound. In some cases,
 she's even had to pay manufacturers to use her carpet - but she gets it all recycled.

So Raynor also charges a fee to carpet dealers, waste haulers and others who want her to recycle their carpet. She has
about a dozen buyers.

Jeff Lerner, operations manager of Floorcraft in San Francisco, said Raynor's service costs about as much as using his
trash hauler. Tom Straus, owner of Straus Carpet Co. in Oakland, said Raynor's pickups are somewhat more expensive,
but still worth it.

"I'm not out to make a buck on this," Straus said. "I just don't want it going to the landfill."

On a national scale, carpet recycling has a long way to go. Only about 6 percent of the country's discarded carpet was
 recycled in 2007 - far short of the industry's 40 percent goal.

But Raynor, after eight months in business, is already beating the national average. On a busy week, she takes in more
than 100,000 pounds of carpet, which would add up to 5 million pounds a year.

That's the equivalent of almost a third of all carpet collected in the city by Norcal.

"Ellen may be new, but she's a fantastic entrepreneur," said Jeremy Stroop of the Carpet Recovery America Effort, the
national trade group. "She's developed a very, very good system for collecting post-consumer carpet and turning it into
other products. She's a fantastic businesswoman and we expect a lot from her."

Why recycle carpet?

It saves raw materials and space in landfills. The Carpet America Recovery Effort, an industry group, estimates that
recycling a ton of carpet saves 198 gallons of oil and prevents the emission of about 2 metric tons of greenhouse gases.
 Recycling a ton of carpet prevents more greenhouse gas emissions than recycling a ton of lumber, paper or cardboard,
according to one federal study cited by the group.

How can I recycle carpet?

If it's in good shape, it may be reusable by a nonprofit. Carpet samples and tiles can also be used by schools for
art projects. Sites such as www.earth911.org and www.stopwaste.org provide directories of recycling organizations.
In the Bay Area, individuals and small businesses can drop off carpet at S.F. Carpet Recycling for a fee of $7 per
cubic yard, or about 15 cents per square yard. Larger businesses can arrange for a pickup. See www.sfcarpetrecycling.com
or call (415) 671-2921. San Francisco residents can also recycle carpet free through the twice-a-year bulky pickups
offered by Norcal Waste Systems, the parent company of Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal. Norcal transfers
most of the carpet it collects to San Francisco Carpet Recycling. See links.sfgate.com/ZEJE to schedule a bulky pickup.

What else can I do?

Consider buying carpet made from recycled materials. Also ask whether the carpet is itself recyclable. Some carpets such
 as those made from Type 6 Nylon are more easily recycled than others. Wool is one of the few natural fibers in today's
carpets that, ironically, cannot be recycled.

For more information

Carpet America Recovery Effort has a directory of carpet recyclers. See www.carpetrecovery.org.

What is carpet made out of? - 70% - nylon

10% - wool

10% - polypropylene

10% - PET plastic

Last updated: 09.09.2008 01:48 PM