Carpet Recycling - Improving Reuse and Recycling of Existing Products and Service

Lawson, Joe and Green, Sarah and Doulcet, Julien (2024) Carpet Recycling - Improving Reuse and Recycling of Existing Products and Service. Masters thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

In 2020 467,000 tonnes of carpet and textile flooring waste was generated in the UK, of which only 65,500 tonnes (14%) was sent to destinations other than landfill or combustion. There are many difficulties in finding alternative cheap, scalable, and environmentally friendly end-of-life routes for carpet, as it is a long-lasting, hard-wearing composite material. The aim of this project, working together with Carpet Recycling UK (CRUK), was to explore the feasibility of various end-of-life routes for carpet in the UK. A literature review was conducted, analysing a variety of different routes for waste carpets and the merits and drawbacks of each, concluding that concrete reinforcement, sound insulation, and oil absorption are the three most promising areas, along with the production method of melt/electrospinning. Experimental work has been conducted on the separation of carpet fibres from backing using sink-float separation, the quantifying of these components with FTIR and DSC analysis, and the production of 3D printing filament. The filament produced by this was not of sufficient quality for further testing, potentially due to thermal degradation and/or contamination, and the report suggests ways in which higher quality filament could be produced. CO2e calculations have been made for a variety of different disposal routes to provide novel information on the CO2e impact of carpet disposal. This section shows that concrete reinforcement, equestrian surfacing, reuse and recycling are the least CO2e intensive end-of-life routes (0.063 tCO2e/tonne of carpet waste). The section also considered the impact of including a projected carbon offset, which reduces the apparent impact of EFW, kiln fuel, and concrete reinforcement (from 2.401 tCO2e/tonne to 0.548, -0.138, and -0.377 tCO2e/tonne respectively). Finally, landfill appears in CO2¬¬e impact as effectively neutral in impact, showing it may be a promising option for sequestering carpet waste until recycling technology improves.