The other day when we had some carpet replaced (with Green Label certified of course) in our home-office the carpet installers generously offered to take the old carpet away for only $60. When we asked where they would take the used carpet they unfortunately mentioned something about a dump (or was that landfill?) That didn’t exactly sit well with us. We did a little checking and found SF Carpet Recycling.

This Bayview based collection site for post consumer carpet and carpet pad accepts used carpet for the purpose of recycling. After removing the carpet and padding from our vehicle the friendly employees use a Star Trek looking light spectrometer to determine the material. We just had a few rolls but on a busy day, they recycle 30,000 pounds.

Much of the carpet they collect feeds the "cradle to cradle" process where it eventually becomes new carpet all over again. It’s a no brainer to as recycling post consumer carpet saves money, avoids growing the garbage in the landfill, and reduces the need for virgin oil in the carpet manufacturing process.

Carpet currently makes up between three and five percent of landfill waste and much it remains there for an extremely long time. Not only can we help divert the carpet from the landfill but we are helping the environment. According to the 2006 CARE Annual Report for every 10 million pounds of post-consumer carpet recycled

• 50,000 cubic yards of landfill space is saved

• 70 million pounds of GHG emissions are avoided (CO2 equivalents)

For those of you looking at the bottom line, when you request (or bring yourself) that your old carpet be brought to SF Carpet Recycling, then you will save money too as there prices offer a significant savings as opposed to disposing of unwanted carpet at a refuse facility.