When Carpet Recycling UK were first put in touch with Saint Flooring through core founder member Cormar Carpets, Saint Flooring as a key customer of Cormar were handling very high volumes of clean fitting offcuts which at the time were being sent to landfill. 

Cormar were committed to helping their customers save money by collaborating with Carpet Recycling UK and its network, and to assist Carpet Recycling UK to find quality carpet offcuts for their recycling members.

Saint Flooring is a trusted contractor for the new home building market, and so offering take back and recycling of waste as part of the contract can only be of benefit to the main contractor customer.

At the time it felt like a mountain to climb, training staff, putting systems in place to take back offcuts, baling them, palletised and ready for collection, but they have achieved great progress with the support of Carpet Recycling UK and now report they are recycling the following materials from their 4 depots.

• Carpet (140 tonnes diverted YTD)
• Underlay
• Polythene
• Cardboard

Commenting in mid-September it is reassuring that the business is doing well in the face of the current challenges – “We have seen a real increase in demand for our carpet waste over the post lockdown with recyclers offering to pay for waste.  It seems the new house build sector hasn’t just woken up from lockdown, but it has gone into overdrive” says David Heafey, Finance Director.   

David is very pleased with the collections he has been able to arrange every two weeks from all depots.    “We found John Cotton as our recycling partner through Carpet Recycling UK membership.  They have proven very reliable and easy to deal with as a partner in respect of clean carpet waste collections” 

Saint Flooring installed balers for waste compaction at all depots with a commitment to move towards ISO 14001.  Compacting waste would mean that more carpet waste could be put onto the waggons and therefore save fuel.  They also work closely to ensure there are no contaminates in the carpet waste.

Underlay offcuts are being collected on a trial basis with another partner, and hopefully this system will be replicated as the partner develops production capacity.

“It is important for our clients/potential clients (Housebuilders) to know we take our environmental responsibilities seriously and the whole waste project demonstrates that perfectly” says David.

Speaking to David regularly for updates, it has been very encouraging to hear about the effort and motivation involved in setting up the processes.  It is great to know that Saint Flooring have achieved recycling of such high volumes of a material that used to go to landfill. 

We have recently had a complete overhaul of our website which now includes a sustainability section detailing all our environmental initiatives:

For more information on suitable outlets for your carpet waste