Linn County, Iowa City landfills diverting old carpet

Someone actually wants the tired and tattered carpeting you've talked about replacing for years.

The Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency and the Iowa City Landfill and Recycling Center have begun diverting carpet from their landfills and shipping it to Heritage Environmental Services' facility in Iowa City for processing and recycling.

Plastic fibers from the recycled carpeting will end up in plastic components in new vehicles, outdoor lawn furniture and other products, said John Donahue, manager at Heritage's 5-year-old facility at 2324 Heinz Rd., Iowa City.

By way of example, Donahue points to the plastic fibers in containment booms that captured oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, saying those fibers ended up in plastic parts used under the hood of the Chevy Volt. Your carpet could end up there, too, he said.

The carpet recycling venture in Linn and Johnson counties is being driven by Heritage, which is a national environmental services entity with a brand new carpet recycling plant in Kansas City, Mo., Donahue explained.

In the first month of the carpet-recycling pilot project, Donahue said the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency has shipped 25 tons of carpeting to the Iowa City facility that otherwise would have ended up in the agency's Site 2 landfill at County Home Road and Highway 13. Another 8 tons has come from the Iowa City Landfill, he said.

Put in context, the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency buried 194,588 tons of material in its landfills in the fiscal year that ended June 30, while it diverted another 62,500 tons, including 30,000 tons of grass, leaves, branches and food waste; 11,800 tons of wood waste; 14,000 tons of curbside recyclables; 1,700 tons of appliances, metro and tires; 4,057 tons of shingles; and 900 tons of hazardous materials.

Finding a useful market for unwanted carpeting destined for the dump can only improve the Solid Waste Agency's mission of landfilling less and diverting more, said Joe Horaney, the agency's communications director.

“We knew there was a fair amount of carpeting and carpet pads being landfilled, but the amount being diverted is even higher than expected,” Horaney said. “It's the latest example of finding a new use for something that was once considered just garbage.”

In Iowa City, Jennifer Jordan, the recycling coordinator for the city of Iowa City, says the carpet recycling venture at the Iowa City Landfill is working surprising well “with no advertising and with very little effort.”

Contractors, carpet layers and others bringing carpeting to the Solid Waste Agency's Site 1 and Site 2 landfills continue to pay the $38.50 per ton tipping fee to the landfill, where the carpet is set aside in a container for Heritage to pick up and transport to its Iowa City facility.

There, Heritage's crew sorts the carpet by types and bales it for shipment to the company's Kansas City plant.

Donahue said there are four basic carpet types: polypropylene and two kinds of nylon, which are recycled, and a newer type, polyethylene terephthalate, which is not. Most of the carpeting coming to the Iowa City facility is older carpeting, not polyethylene terephthalate, and so gets baled for shipment to the Kansas City plant. Carpet padding is shipped elsewhere for recycling into new padding, he said.

Once in Kansas City, Heritage feeds the carpet by type up a conveyor and into a machine, which shreds the carpet, rips off the backing, filters out contaminants and produces clean fiber ready to be turned into new plastic products.

A Heritage video from its Kansas City plant shows 1,600 pounds of carpeting going in one end and 1,200 pounds of reusable fiber at the end of the recycling process. In a given day, the plant has been producing 120,000 pounds of fiber, the company states.

Donahue said the company ships the fiber to plastic companies where the material is turned into pellets to be molded into material for the auto and other industries. What isn't pelletized may be used for roofing tar with some also burned for energy, he said.

At the end of the day, recycling carpeting will work if it makes bottom-line business sense, he said.

“Some 7 billion pounds of carpeting is just being thrown away in this country every year,” Donahue said. “Our technology can capture that.”

The nuts-and-bolts, dollars-and-cents of Heritage's local carpet venture have yet to be worked out.

For now, Donahue said his program in Linn and Johnson counties is a pilot project, though he adds he is already looking to expand his retrieval network to the Quad Cities and Dubuque. It's too soon to know if those agreeing to divert carpeting might one day get a break on the tipping fee or how much his own operation in Iowa City will get paid as the middle player in the recycling venture.

“We'll find a balance somewhere, and hopefully, make everybody happy,” he said.