Like everybody else I’ve always looked at CARE, the Carpet America Recovery Effort, as forward thinking on the part of the carpet industry in its mission to divert post-consumer from the nation’s landfills. Launched in 2002 by a unique agreement between industry and state agencies, CARE put the carpet industry head and shoulders above other industries in the U.S. in assuming responsibility for its waste – in this case 2.5 tons of carpet that’s disposed of each year.
Nine years later, in 2011 the effort diverted 333 million pounds of carpet from landfills, 250 million pounds of which were recycled back into carpet and other consumer products. To date the program has kept 2.3 million billion pounds of used carpet out of landfills.