We were all thrilled at Carpet Tile Recycling to know that all our hard work promoting carpet tile re-use has paid off. We are the winners of Reuse Members of Year 2019 and we’re very proud that the trophy is in our reception so we can tell our visitors and customers about it.

We’re constantly approaching developers/construction companies/etc to tell them about our service and how they can benefit, while getting them pleased to join the ‘green’ approach to construction.

And we try to keep our website at the top of Google searches, so it generates lots of interest and gets the word out there. Otherwise, how will people know about recycling their used tiles?

We have been collecting, grading, cleaning, sorting and selling our used carpet tiles for over 13 years and last year we re-used 180,000 carpet tiles or approximately 225 tonnes.

Our warehouse is on a terraced house street in an economically challenged area in a small suburb of Nottingham and prides itself on its diverse population and reasonably close-knit community. Because of where we are, we’re well-known in the area. Not always for the right reasons though! When an ‘arctic’ is trying to deliver tiles to us or turn round in the surrounding narrow streets – we are definitely known for the wrong reasons!

But…………we’re also well-known for being approachable and the local churches and community centre know that we will always help them with very reasonably priced flooring when they need it. Often, we have lots of fabulous tiles left on the shelves and can give the tiles to these organisations free of charge. The word spreads and every year we give away more tiles than the year before, last year 4,000 tiles in fact. We know that it helps the wider community and we’re very happy to be able to do it.

Selling the tiles once they arrive is the easy bit, it is much more difficult to source good, clean tiles, but luckily, we seem to be very good at that. Also, we are lucky that CRUK help us by putting leads our way from companies, such as flooring contractors and demolition firms, who have tiles they need to get rid of.

We love being imaginative and thinking of alternative uses for the tiles and are thrilled that our re-used tiles are finding their way into very unusual places. Here are a couple of examples:

We got a call from an office-strip out company in Manchester who had 11,000 dark grey tiles to get rid of. We arranged to pick them up and now they’ve been sorted and graded. Some of the C Grade tiles are being used by a company as ‘weed suppression for tree planting’, some are for ‘newt management’ on construction sites, and others are being used as ‘sound insulation’ in a recording studio.

Another call came from a large office in London who were updating their furnishings. They had 6,000 Milliken tiles and because the tiles are foam backed, we’ve been able to sell lots of them to a firm who uses them as packaging for pre-cast concrete items. We’re also in contact with several glass manufacturers who use these foam-backed tiles in their processes too. It all goes to prove that a carpet tile, whatever it’s condition, is able to be re-used somewhere.

So, just get in touch with us or CRUK if you have tiles that need picking up and in the mean-time, we’re raising a glass to celebrate our win and say to you all: “Happy Carpet Tile Re-use and Recycling”!