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Over 20,000 square metres of carpets used at the major recycling and waste industry exhibition at Birmingham’s NEC in the UK have been recycled into new engineered construction products.

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The recycling project was undertaken by Carpet Recycling UK, the industry body for recycling and re-using carpet. The project was aimed at ensuring that stand and aisle carpet from September’s RWM in partnership with CIWM event was diverted from landfill.

The grey and red Sommer NP carpets were specially selected by i2i Events Group, RWM organisers, for their recyclability and extensive colour range. The carpets were laid by Melville I GES for the thousands of visitors to the NEC, followed by a unique recovery system supplied by their partner Green Venture UK based in Solihull.

After the event, carpets were transferred to South Wales-based Tilon Composites, which extracted the polypropylene fibres for processing into new building products, such as scaffold boards and acoustic barriers.

CRUK director Laurance Bird said that carpets require ingredients to be optimised for recycling at design stage. He added that carpet manufacturers and recyclers are increasingly coming together to create value for uplifted carpets by extracting raw materials, such as polypropylene.