Waalwijk, The Netherlands– Tarkett is closing the loop on commercial carpet tiles in Europe thanks to a new partnership with Aquafil. This is the result of an intensive collaboration over recent years, going beyond the traditional customer and supplier relationship, the company said.
The two companies present this step towards circular economy at Tarkett’s carpet tile facility, here. Its recycling center creates two streams of materials that can be recycled and transformed into high-quality resources for new products. Tarkett has developed breakthrough technology at its Waalwijk facility and is now able to separate the two principal components of carpet tiles – yarn and backing — while retaining more than 95% yarn purity.
This level of purity is vital in ensuring that the polyamide 6 (PA6) yarn can be recycled by Aquafil and later transformed into regenerated Econyl nylon yarn. In addition, Tarkett has increased its capacity in Waalwijk to produce its EcoBase carpet tile backing to meet customers’ growing demand for this sustainable product.
Available since 2010, EcoBase has been designed for disassembly from the outset. Overall, 100% of an EcoBase-backed carpet tile with PA6 yarn is recyclable. The PA6 yarn and backing are recycled without loss of quality — used yarn becomes new yarn and used backing new backing. Recycling EcoBase-backed carpet tiles with Econyl yarn delivers up to 84%2 CO2 savings compared to incineration, the company said.
