Much of the carpeting today that is recycled back into carpet is recycled for captive or internal use.“We will be turning waste carpet into high-purity nylon that can be turned back into new carpet,” said CEO and founder Ron Simonetti, a 20-year veteran of the chemical industry who founded the company three years ago.
“It is a good time to start the plant,” he said in a interview, after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the 40,000 square foot plant. “Many companies are looking for high-quality recycled nylon to increase their recycled content, and there are plenty of opportunities to recycle” waste carpeting. Currently, only roughly 250 million pounds — or 5 percent — of the 5 billion pounds of the carpeting that is discarded annually is recycled.
It takes roughly 100 million pounds of carpeting to produce 50 million pounds of recycled nylon resin, he said.
Simonetti said the cost of getting the new plant up and running is $5 million, including the cost to build a pilot plant and conduct pilot testing — which was completed last summer. He said MCR would have the new plant running by the end of June and operating at full capacity three months after that.
MCR has licensed a dissolution process for recycling carpet waste that was developed by Chris Roberts, chairman of department of chemical engineering at Auburn University. Simonetti contends that the process is superior to mechanical separation of carpet waste because it allows for greater removal of contaminants.
He said the recycled nylon has a purity level above 99 percent compared to the typical 95-98 percent purity levels achieved in mechanical separation.