After an investment of £750,000, Innovate Recycle has opened a new recycling plant which is said to be the UK’s first recycling plant which will extract plastic from tens of thousands of tonnes of old carpets.

Instead of 98% of 500,000 tonnes of old carpets going to landfill or incineration which is costly and has a negative environmental impact, the new recycling plant takes 27,000 tonnes of end-of-life retail, public-sector and domestic carpets and through using a patented process extracts an estimated 20,000 tonnes of polypropylene per year and develops the plastic it extracts into new products. The products can be used in industries and have been used in products such as automotives and 3D printing.

This excellent development of Innovate Recycle retrieving polypropylene reduces the carbon impact by 1.6 kg of CO2 per kilogram of carpet.

The plant is powered by wind and solar, provided by the adjacent Chelveston Renewable Energy Park, and the developers hope that it will be the first in a new network which will develop over the UK over the next decade.

Along with the new development an accreditation programme has been created which verifies the recyclability of individual carpet ranges and will provide consumers with recycling info.