Why is carpet hard to recycle?

Carpets and rugs are made from several materials such as different fibres, backings and coatings. To improve durability it can be treated with dyes and chemicals before being glued together. Especially the low cost in used adhesive binders are crosslinking and therefor hard to seperate and recycle. Most likely, new adhesive technologies for bonding carpets are needed.

How to improve the recyclability of carpets?

New VAE (Vinyl Acetate, PVAC, with ethylene copolymer) based adhesives have shown several advantages in relation to excisting, low cost adhesive caotings:

• VAE adhesive coatings can be good soluble, supporting the seperation of materials from end-of-use carpets. This has been proven at labscale in studies at German institutes.
  • as with many recycling initiatives, it is hard to compete economically with virgin plastics
• UAE supports flame retardancy of carpet, therefor production of flame retardant carpet comes with no cost addition (reduce or replace ATH)
  • This also reduces CO2 footprint and supports even more the recycling concept
• VAE is a binder that supports low VOC for interior use, and therefor is already used in carpet production
• UAE is a stable polymer, carpets are expected to have a longer lifetime
• VAE is already used in carpets, for low-odour purposes