DALTON—To educate procurement agents on the developments in carpet recycling and the products available made from old carpet, the Carpet America Recovering Effort, (CARE), and Seattle Public Utilities hosted a sustainable purchasing webinar recently.
Approximatley 50 people attended from the Northwestern states to Georgia to Connecticut, representing collaborative public agencies on the city, county and state levels, as well as from federal agencies like the Department of Energy, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Reclamation, said Shirli Axelrod, senior environmental analyst, Seattle Public Utilities.
“Buyers for products made of recovered material are crucial in order for recycling programs to succeed. Public purchasing has long been part of our strategy for furthering recycling,” she said.
The biggest challenge is finding a place to sell products made from post-consumer carpets,” said Jeremy Stroop, operations manager, CARE. “We want to move the needle on carpet recycling but the only way to do that is to make products from post-consumer carpet that consumers want to buy.”
Although a leader in many other environmental initiatives, the Pacific Northwest currently trails the rest of the nation in the amount of carpet it recycles. The organizers hope the procurement webinar will move them in the right direction to diverting additional carpet from their wastestreams.
To see specifics from the webinar, please visit carpetrecovery.org/carpetproduct_ webinar.php.