Approximately 5 billion lbs of carpet will be removed from buildings in the US each year for the foreseeable future, according to a report by Georgia Tech Research Corporation. The face of that carpet contains plastic that can be reused, but it is held in place by a latex cross-linked polymer heavily loaded with calcium carbonate. The report states that this backing has almost no value as a recycled material. Researchers then burnt carpet as fuel at Lehigh Cement's kiln in Evansville, Pennsylvania. Carpet proved technically suitable, yet the report concludes that the economic barriers were too high.
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