Carpet Recycling UK will conduct its Textile Waste Diversion Survey soon, to understand the various end destinations and volumes for the different streams of textile flooring waste arising in the UK. The next Survey will cover tonnages for the years 2020 and 2021 and it is planned for the results to be shared in the Spring of 2022.

As for previous years, the Survey relies on the information provided by our network, including companies who are handling textile flooring waste and those who are processing it for the outlets.
We plan to include a verification process via the independent consultancy Oakdene Hollins, as per the previous survey in 2019.

Request for information

Waste companies and recyclers – please do help us in providing accurate information and please note, that all information is handled in strict confidence, where no company is named, or any commercially sensitive data shared, and the data and information is used to provide an overall picture for the UK.

Opinion

The pandemic saw the flooring industry struggle for supplies to keep up with demand for orders – will this affect the volumes of commercial and domestic flooring wastes?
We also saw an increase in the demand for new homes flooring offcuts in the last couple of years, and it will be interesting to see if the volumes used by our non-woven recyclers have increased through the work, we have done to help flooring contractors to segregate this material.
We reported in September on the policy update relating to the use of carpet fibres in equestrian surfaces and expect that this may affect the results of the 2021 survey. Read our policy update here
The energy from waste market has been affected by the delays caused by Brexit and price increases, and we expect to see an increase in volumes being used in the various UK outlets rather than exported to mainland European processors.

2019 survey

Click here to read coverage of the 2019 survey results to understand trends on the tonnages we reported on.  Since then, Carpet Recycling UK commissioned an independent analysis by Oakdene Hollins to verify the figures and to uncover more sources of textile flooring waste that have been diverted from landfill. Overall, the figures were updated, and it was found that the UK is diverting approximately 65% of its textile flooring waste from landfill into the following outlets.