Minnesota has a legislated metropolitan area recycling goal of 75 percent by 2030. Recycling carpet can contribute recovered fiber and polymer resin for post-consumer content products and conserve landfill space.
Currently, carpet recyclers in Minnesota are only able to recover Nylon 6 and Nylon 6-6, and cannot recycle PET carpet yet. Industry is moving away from more durable long life materials that can be recycled into carpet, toward commodity resins with shorter life that cannot be recycled back into carpet
Minnesota has been working with the industry on voluntary programs for 20+ years, yet the state recovery and recycling rate is still in the single digits with only one facility in operation, and no new processing investment or capacity in sight. California is the only state with significant carpet recycling and infrastructure, driven by a state law with explicit recovery goals (24% by 2020). Other states have introduced or are working on legislation to divert carpet from landfills and waste to energy to be recycled.
Job benefits
If Minnesota recovered 50% of discarded carpet (~65,000 tons per year), that would support an estimated 195 direct jobs and up to 650 indirect jobs associated with new product manufacture Minnesota has one recycler that currently supports 15 jobs processing ~6000 tons per year California estimates that it is recovering 49,000 tons of carpet per year and this is directly supporting 147 jobs in carpet processing for fiber recovery (3 FTE per recovered per 1000 tons) California further estimates that there are an additional 9 to 15 indirect jobs for each 1000 tons, for a total of 12 to 18 jobs per recovered 1000 tons.
Greenhouse gas benefits
Carpet is largely made from petroleum and reuse/recycling has significant greenhouse gas benefits relative to landfilling or incineration. The WARM Model forecasts that Minnesota would reduce GHG by 333,763 metric tons of CO2e if all the carpet generated were recycled (based on 2016 MN data). This is equivalent to 71,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year, or 58,000 homes’ electrical consumption for one year, or 365 million pounds of coal.
Content was compiled from talking points prepared by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Assessment of proposed language:
| mn_psc_assessment_carpet_2019.docx |
