In 2002, the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) was formed by carpet manufacturers, various representatives of government from the federal, state and local levels as well as non-government organizations. These groups signed a memorandum of understanding with the goal of working to develop market-based solutions for the recovery of value from post-consumer carpet.
The group began literally at ground zero. At that time there was no carpet recovery infrastructure, no network of collectors and processors, and certainly no products being manufactured from post-consumer carpet. It was the task of CARE to build such an infrastructure.