ATLANTA—Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) held its sixth annual Entrepreneur Meeting recently at the Atlanta Airport Marriott Hotel. The organization hosted more than 60 representatives—with about 20% being first-timers—from over 47 different organizations with a vested interest in the carpet recycling industry. The purpose of the meeting is to focus on the needs and issues of the entrepreneurial carpet collection and processing community in a collegial and open atmosphere, while providing an informal networking forum for the attendees of the meeting, noted Jeremy Stroop, CARE’s operations manager.
The meeting addressed the difficult economic conditions facing the carpet recycling industry, the renegotiation of CARE’s Memorandum of Understanding for Carpet Stewardship for 2012, new product opportunities that use post-consumer carpet as a feedstock, as well as state and federal grant programs for CARE’s entrepreneurs. “The limited number of outlets for post-consumer carpet in the production of products continues to hinder the growth of this new industry,” said Stroop. In 2009 one of CARE’s main points of focus was the discovery of additional market opportunities for the plastic derived from the recycling of carpet.
“Since carpet recycling is still a fairly new industry,” he continued, “the sky is the limit on what may be accomplished. I firmly believe the entrepreneurs working in this industry are the best and the brightest. When this venture becomes hugely successful, a lot of the credit will rest on their accomplishments.”
One of the highlights of the meeting was the “New Product Opportunity Session,” in which GeoHay, Ravago Americas and Polar Materials educated attendees as to how their respective companies were using recovered carpet materials and the potential expansion of their manufacturing use.
Sean Ragiel, president of Carpetcycle, addressed the concerns and needs of the carpet recycling community in an atmosphere, which promoted the sharing of open and frank ideas.
CARE continues to develop programs that assist the entrepreneurs based on their re- quest from the meeting, he noted. “One project that will be implemented at their request is a universal reclamation certificate that can be used to quantify the amount of carpet diverted for a particular project. Once the carpet diversion is tallied, the certificate will be presented to the project manager or building owner as proof of their reclamation efforts.”
For more information on CARE, call 706.428.2127.