Enviro-Tech® carpet
Material |
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PET resin fibre derived from detergent containers and other plastic bottles |
Design |
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Image Carpets Inc. |
Manufacturer |
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Image Carpets Inc., USA |
Year |
|
1970 |
Sustainable
category
Design phase | |
The bottles are collected at recycling centres and then washed; the heavy bases and caps are removed. The heavy plastic is recycled in a separate process. The bottles are ground into one-inch strips, and a second grinder reduces the strips to a mixture of quarter-inch chips containing PET, other plastics, aluminium chips from left-over bottle caps, paper from labels, glue from the bottle and label. Paper is blown out of the mixture by air jets and a chemical solution strips off the glue. A two-step water/electrostatic process isolates PET chips from other impurities. In the carpet plant the chips are melted to the consistency of honey and forced through moulds; the resulting fibres are about as thick as a human hair. The Enviro-Tech® carpet system keeps more than 50 million pounds of soft drink and condiment bottles out of America’s landfills every year. Image Carpets is the only manufacturer to produce fibre for carpets from recycled PET materials. On loan from the European distributor.
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