With residential and commercial construction at a virtual standstill in recent months, the recession has made for fairly grim times in the floor-covering industry.

But when it comes to sustainability, Calhoun, Ga.-based Mohawk Industries Inc. believes it has a story with a happy ending -- environmentally and economically.

Amid the white noise of greenwashing in all industries today, Mohawk, which posted net sales of $6.8 billion in 2008, isn't just spinning a good yarn. Among many tangible examples of its commitment to sustainable manufacturing, the company:

• Each year takes in 3 billion plastic containers. Those made from polyethylene terephthalate are used to produce approximately 170 million pounds of recycled fiber at its Summerville, Ga., plant, according to the company. The fiber then is used to make Mohawk carpets.
• Operates a 40,000-square-foot recycling facility in Chatsworth, Ga., called the Greenworks Center, which takes in post-consumer residential carpet from all over the country. The center processes 100% of the carpet-fiber, backing and latex -- and recovers about 90% of all materials into useable products. Mohawk claims this is the highest recovery rate in the industry -- approximately three times that of the next-best carpet-recycling program.
• Boasts a growing number of product materials that contain recycled content and that are made with sustainable processes. For example, Mohawk's Colorstrand Solution dyed nylon fiber for commercial carpet products contains 15% pre-consumer recycled content and is manufactured in a process that consumes no water or steam, according to the company. Mohawk also has developed what it calls Permalink adhesive film, which can be placed directly on top of old carpet, allowing post-consumer carpet to be repurposed as carpet pad (and diverted from landfills).
• Operates an 877 carpet-recycling hotline through its "ReCover" program. When consumers nationwide call the hotline, Mohawk arranges for pickup of their carpet and transports it to its growing network of recyclers.

Mohawk Group President Al Kabus (pictured here in front of bales of shredded post-consumer carpet staged for the next phase of processing at the company's Greenworks recycling facility), believes that a closed loop is the "ultimate frontier" for green manufacturing.

Al Kabus, president of the Mohawk Group, Mohawk's commercial flooring division, credits not only Mohawk but also a number of its major competitors for making great strides toward greening their operations. Still, Kabus believes that the end game in green manufacturing is "closing the loop, and bringing things full circle, where everything you produce gets taken back and remade."

"And that's been the most daunting circle for everybody to close," he says.

While Kabus calls closing the loop the "ultimate frontier" for green manufacturing, he says getting to that point involves more than just reducing, reusing and recycling.

"I look at the future of environmentalism in different components," Kabus explains. "First of all, we need to have product sustainability -- making products as responsibly as we can, but also keeping the quality of those products great. To build a 100% recycled product but have it fall apart in two years versus making a product that is built, let's say, halfway environmental but lasts 15 or 20 years -- there's a lot of argument that could go on that says the latter might be better than the former.

"So I think it's really important that we get the balance right on performance and quality versus making sure we incorporate conscious indexing of materials."

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