Environmental Leader

Carpet manufacturer Shaw Industries will have a factory that is nearly 100 percent powered by leftover carpet pieces and post-consumer rug reclamation.

The factory, in Dalton, Ohio, will feature a boiler that will qualify it as Re2E, or Reclaim-to-Energy, status. It will use up to 76 million pounds of reclaimed carpet a year, reports the Calhoun Times.

The project should be completed by late next year.

Shaw already has one alternative fuel-to-energy facility, where about 36 million pounds of combined post-industrial carpet and wood manufacturing by-products are converted to steam energy through a gasification process.

The new project will use strictly carpet materials, in support of Shaw’s post-consumer carpet reclamation network.

It will generate as much as 50,000 pounds of steam an hour, or 90 percent of the carpet plant’s steam demands. Plus, the project will supply half the plant’s electricity, or about 3.5 million kilowatt hours per year, the average annual electrical usage of 300 households.

The project includes new technology to help limit emissions, the story said.

Shaw’s corporate sustainability efforts are run under the Green Edge program. Shaw says that each year it recycles enough nylon thread to wrap around the Earth 2,00o times.