New ‘eco’' carpet could help ease pressure on UAE landfill sites

Abu Dhabi, April 8, 2013 (WAM) - European carpet manufacturer Desso is now going beyond mere sustainability by embracing Cradle to Cradle design principles and producing a carpet tile range with a polyolefin-based backing. Carpet tiles with this backing have reached a level where up to 97% of the materials are positively defined 1. That means all ingredients have been assessed as either optimal or tolerable, according to the Cradle to Cradle assessment criteria and can be reused or recycled, therefore potentially reducing the pressure on UAE landfill sites. According to waste management officials at Dubai Municipality one of its two landfill sites will close soon and the other will reach capacity in less than seven years, with each Dubai resident sending on average 2.8 kilos of waste to the landfill every day. It's a similar story in Abu Dhabi which generates 10 million tonnes of municipal waste annually in the emirate, according to the Centre for Waste management in Abu Dhabi. "Contributing to that problem are the millions of square metres of worn-out carpet that is thrown away every year. In Dubai alone there is 9.2 million square metres of office space with potentially another 1.6 million square metres coming on line this year according to the Q4 2012 Asteco Property Management Report. Clearly not all of that space is occupied, but imagine that amount of carpet being incinerated or dumped over the coming years as worn carpet is replaced, creating yet more waste management headaches," Andre Dulka, Regional Director, Middle East, Africa '&' India, for Desso. Desso was the first carpet manufacturer in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to adopt the Cradle to Cradle design, which is about creating continuous cycles of both biological and technical ‘nutrients’. This means that products are made from positively defined materials that are easy to disassemble, in order to create new products in both the biological and technical cycles, whilst using manufacturing processes which rely on renewable energy, seek to conserve water, and to embrace social responsibility. – Emirates News Agency, WAM