Pre-Consumer Waste

When you produce as much carpet as we do, there can be a considerable amount of manufacturing waste left over – scrap, trimmings, and other by-products that will never be used in the consumer market. Rather than simply tossing these by-products into landfills, we have developed all kinds of innovative ways to recycle and reuse them. As a result, we are greatly reducing the amount of manufacturing waste that is thrown away. Just as importantly, by incorporating this pre-consumer waste in to the material make up of our products, we're also reducing the amount of natural resources we consume. Here are a few of the many ways in which we're transforming pre-consumer waste into valuable materials.

• Yarn – We take the yarn waste that comes from tufting carpet yarns and then recycle it into various useful applications such as synthetic padding.
• Fiber – We extrude many of the fibers we use in our carpet products and we recycle much of our own pre-consumer materials from the extrusion process right back into our fibers such as Colorstrand.
• Backing Material – As one of the largest producers of carpet backing, we found a way to recover the waste that comes from producing our backings and use it to make our high performance carpet cores.
• Shrink-wrap – We use a considerable amount of shrink-wrap in our operations, as do other major manufacturers. But rather than discarding it into landfills, we recycle it and use it as a key ingredient in our high performance carpet cores.
• Cardboard – Our waste management group strives to have 100% of all the cardboard used in our manufacturing facilities recycled. This cardboard is collected and recycled back into other paper or cardboard boxes—making it a closed-loop paper to paper system. We then turn around and repurchase this material and use it again.
• Pallets – We use and reuse our wooden pallets until they become damaged beyond repair. Then, instead of dumping them in landfills, we send them to be ground up and used for mulch or compost.
• Waste Management System – This is a unique, comprehensive system we put in place to help us identify, evaluate, and reduce or eliminate waste streams. It's how we ensure best practices for waste prevention throughout all our manufacturing facilities. The corporate waste prevention team is responsible for communicating and educating its plant managers about the technologies and programs in place across the company to ensure best practices for waste prevention throughout all of the manufacturing facilities. Through this systematic approach, Mohawk has identified more than 100 different waste streams across its facilities. By tracking the pounds of waste—referred to as byproducts—of each of these waste streams in an internal documentation system, Mohawk's management can better guide the company's environmental engineering groups and plant managers to find economical solutions to not only recycle the waste, but to eliminate it altogether.
• Old Equipment – When new initiatives call for the replacement of old equipment, we look for ways to recycle or reuse this equipment rather than simply throwing it away. For example, when developing a new production system for our Encycle product line, we were able to divert 95% of the old equipment from landfills. We also transported and reused some of this equipment in our Mohawk GreenWorks Center.
• Ceramics – Last year, Mohawk incorporated more than 197 million pounds of pre-consumer material from another manufacturing process and over 55 million pounds of recycled waste fired tile as raw materials for making our floor and wall tile products. The recycled material make-up in our tiles depends on the product manufacturing location, but currently it is 45-64% in floor tile, 31-44% in wall tile, and 7-22% in mosaics. When waste fired tiles can't be reused internally, Mohawk makes every attempt to identify state approved reuse projects or other aftermarket applications. Over 64 million pounds of waste fired tile was diverted from landfills in 2006 for various beneficial reuse projects.