Process Premier Award 2012
Presented at The Lincoln Centre, London on 20 June 2012 by Sir John Armitt, Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority.
Recofloor
The vinyl flooring take-back scheme
Sir John Armitt (right) presenting the award to Jane Gardner, Project Manager.
Founded in 2009 by UK flooring manufacturers Altro and Polyflor, Recofloor is the UK’s first, joint, industry-led, vinyl-flooring recycling scheme. Managed by resource recovery specialist Axion Consulting, Recofloor diverts waste vinyl flooring from landfill by collecting the material from across the supply chain and recycles it.
Recofloor is a unique example of two major competitors working collaboratively to promote sustainability of their products - a major achievement and an important step for the flooring sector as a whole.
Altro and Polyflor’s actions fully support Recofloor’s view of how producer responsibility is the future for reducing waste to landfill, which contributes to a more sustainable future. Recofloor overcame technical challenges in incorporating flooring into its recycling processes and has embedded recycling into its company culture.
Flooring manufacturers collect vinyl flooring by backload using their existing transport network or diverting to a nearby site while in a given area. Flooring contractors take waste vinyl to drop-off sites at local distributors. Bulking-up of collected material means fewer visits to sites and greatly reduces the scheme’s carbon impact.
The nominal collection fees are well below current landfill tax charges. This reduces waste disposal costs, particularly for smaller contractors, helping them collect more waste material for recycling.
The recycled flooring is either used to manufacture new flooring or make traffic management products such as traffic cones and bases for road signs.
Recofloor also operates a sector education programme. It attends trade events, gives presentations and holds ‘on-the-road’ events at its drop-off sites to engage with collectors.
Benefits include:
Over 3 years, 700 tonnes of waste vinyl flooring - enough to cover a football pitch 32 times - has been diverted from landfill.
A net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 556 tonnes since the scheme began - equivalent to the emissions from a family car driving around the equator 67 times.
Waste disposal cost savings for collectors of between 50% and 75%.
In July 2011, Recofloor became a limited company - showing further commitment to the scheme’s ongoing viability. This coincides with more drop-off sites and a bigger, better service for collectors. So far in 2012, Recofloor has diverted a tonne of waste flooring a day from landfill - tremendous progress.
‘Being shortlisted for the BCE Awards caps off Recofloor’s most successful year to date and validates our work in reducing vinyl flooring waste going to landfill.’
Jane Gardner, Project Manager, Recofloor.
"What has made this scheme a major success and a worthy winner of this award is the commitment to engage everyone within the process. May it continue to grow and the model to expend into other areas of take back."
Eddie Bingham, BCE Awards Judge.
To find out more about this project, please contact:
jgardner@axionconsulting.co.uk
www.recofloor.org
To see the Recofloor video click here.