Old Carpet to Aid In Oil Spill Cleanup

Your stained shag carpet could stop the oil spill. At least one Florida county is using GeoHay, or bales of recycled carpet, to help protect the shoreline from some of the oil spilling into the Gulf from the broken BP oil well. Photo: Geohay

Getting stains and spills out of your carpet can be a nightmare, with carpet fibers quickly absorbing and retaining liquids if not tended to right away. Though an inconvenience for homeowners, these properties make carpet the ideal material for oil and sediment absorption.

But county officials in Walton County, Fla. realized this component could be beneficial. Made into a product called GeoHay, soiled or tossed out carpet is recycled into barrier filtration products typically used in erosion and sediment control. The highly absorbent product has also been found an excellent defense for oil threatening the Florida coastline.

GeoHay works by allowing water to flow through its structure, while trapping oil and other sediments into the fibers. Unlike hay bales, which are commonly used for temporary erosion control, GeoHay is reusable and does not fall apart or decompose with use, making it a durable alternative.

“GeoHay is an excellent example of recycled carpet product coming onto the market to fill a critical need,” says Georgina Sikorski, executive director of Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), the join industry-government effort to increase the amount of recycling and reuse of post-consumer carpet and reduce the amount of waste carpet going to landfills.

“Even though GeoHay was designed for erosion control and not for absorbing oil, it makes perfect sense to use it that way.”

Through the work of CARE, the industry diverted 311 million pounds of carpet from the landfill in 2009, an increase of 19 million pounds from 2008. This still represents a very small percentage of discarded carpet, acknowledged by CARE, which aims to divert 25 percent of carpet from landfills by 2012.

One of the difficulties in recycling carpet is due to its multiple material makeup, including different forms of plastic such as nylon, polypropylene (PP) and terephthalate (PET).

This makes it more complicated to recycle than more uniform material items such as water bottles and plastic food jars. Synthetic carpet can be recycled into a variety of products, however, including carpet padding, plastic pellets, lumber, fiber blocks, engineered fuel and new carpet.

Related articles
Operation Deepwater Clean
Maine to Increase Carpet Recycling