Carpet manufacturers are halting their nationwide voluntary subsidy program for carpet recycling, which could push some struggling processors out of business. The Carpet and Rug Institute announced April 24 it will end the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) Voluntary Product Stewardship program at the end of June. Through the program, the industry pays about $4 million a year in subsidies to companies that collect and ship post-consumer carpet to end markets. One of the largest subsidy recipients, if not the largest, is DC Foam Recycle, a post-consumer carpet collection company owned by Wellman Advanced Materials. DC Foam Recycle's 12 facilities supply carpet - mostly nylon 6,6 with a smaller amount of nylon 6 - to Wellman, which recycles the plastic into pellets for use in automotive and other applications. "We're anticipating a pretty big loss," said Louis Renbaum, president of DC Foam Recycle. "If we were not part of Wellman, we'd be out of business, for sure." Smaller collectors that are far away from the southeastern U.S., which is where recovered carpet end users are clustered, may not survive, he said in an interview. The carpet recycling industry has already been under significant market pressure, both from low virgin plastic prices and from carpet manufacturers gradually replacing nylons in carpet face fiber with lower-cost PET. More recently, they've been dealing with a collapse in carpet collections caused by the coronavirus.
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