Carpet has taken somewhat of a battering when it comes to sustainability for several reasons. For example, broadloom carpet means the entire roll of carpet needs to be replaced if one section is damaged. Also, the glue used to bind carpet to the floor has been seen as toxic.
As a result, the carpet industry has taken steps to make carpet more sustainable. Modular carpet is becoming increasingly popular, (tiles, instead of rolls). Modular carpet allows just one tile to be replaced if a section is damaged, instead of ripping the entire roll of carpet out. David Rowlinson, marketing manager at Ontera Modular Carpets, says it is becoming more common in the commercial sector, with the market share more than doubling in the past five years. He expects this growth will continue.
The advantage of modular carpet is less waste going to landfill. Also, some manufacturers are now taking back used products and recycling it into future products. “Modular carpets also typically use a single low VOC adhesive, compared to the common use of two applications of adhesive in broadloom installations,” says Clinton Squires, general manager at InterfaceFLOR.
InterfaceFLOR has also developed Tactiles. Instead of application glue, small adhesive tabs replace the broad application of a single adhesive layer. “We estimate 90 per cent of the environmental impact of carpet tile adhesive is eliminated by the use of Tactiles,” Squires says.
The Carpet Institute of Australia (CIA) says carpet is made up of three major fibres — wool, nylon (polyamide) and polypropylene (polyolefin), with the most common blend being 80 per cent wool and 20 per cent nylon. Carpet is graded by the Australian Carpet Classification Scheme (ACCS) for durability and appearance retention. Companies whose products are graded under the scheme include InterfaceFLOR, Tascot and Ontera Modular Carpets, with a total of 3,500 carpets registered with the scheme.
InterfaceFLOR discarded wool as a material eight years ago based on sustainability grounds. Squires says the wear performance of wool also limited the effective life of wool rich carpets. “Also, wool is recognised now as having a high negative environmental impact associated with grazing animals (methane production), water use and waste in scouring and dyeing. Sustainability is now driving manufacturers to look beyond nylon, especially for renewable inputs.”
Rowlinson says most modular carpet tiles are manufactured using nylon 6.6, which is long lasting and can be recycled at the end of its first life. InterfaceFLOR has also introduced polylactic acid derived from corn starch as a partial replacement for nylon.
“The PLA yarn is not directly connected to an oil well for raw materials and if these carpets are disposed of to landfill, the PLA yarn will effectively be composted. This is just one example of sustainable thinking driving new material use — and in these early days it's not clear which material will be in carpets in 20 years time. The important issue is to start trialling and implementing now to grow the experience base with new, more sustainable materials,” Squires says.
The CIA has implemented an environment policy, which has the goals of reducing the negative life cycle impacts of carpets on the environment; providing products that are continually improving; making carpets eco-efficient; and setting a path for sustainable industry practices into the future. It will do this through scientific principles applied in the development of technology and management systems to improve performance; examining ways of reducing environmental impacts, conserving resources and becoming more energy efficient; environmental performance data will be collected and the results reported; and good environmental practice in carpet installation, use and disposal will be promoted.
Design trends
Consumers are becoming bolder with carpet design choices, with bright colours and strong patterns emerging as popular. Rowlinson says stripes have been a constant trend, with that unlikely to change in the near future.
“We have found that a popular trend with our commercial clients is to have a feature carpet in the reception and breakout areas, for example, bold stripes or large-scale geometric designs. Popular colours have been neutrals and charcoal greys with bold accent colours being used in linear and textural patterns. Geometric designs and broken lines also remain popular,” he says.
Squires says flooring is now being seen as a clean palette on which several designs and colours are being created. “Also, green design principles are calling for lighter colours to reflect light within an interior and reduce lighting power consumption,” he says.
But carpet design trends are not universal across all sectors of the building industry. For example, Squires says offices are moving away from greys and charcoals to warmer browns. “In education, random patterns are growing in popularity for their strong functional benefits, along with the ability to add colour highlights.”
Into the future, Squires says Australia has some catching up to do with overseas markets, where good design leads flooring choices. He says, “Also, the Green Building Council of Australia's continued focus on Green Star tools for building will increase the ease with which practitioners can make green product choices as they broaden their tools to cover segments such as retail, health and education.”
In terms of sustainability innovation, Ontera Modular Carpets says the production of recycled yarn is twice as expensive as the production of virgin yarn and would consume double the energy. To mitigate this, it is currently investigating ways to provide opportunities to recycle post industrial and post-consumer waste products to make it feasible to breakdown all of the components of the product. This could then be used for up to 40 per cent of the backing, and will be one step closer to make carpets as sustainable a product as possible.
