02 Jul What Happens To Old Underlay At The End Of Its Life
Whenever you’re renovating a space, there is going to be waste. Demolition makes quite a mess, and that mess has to go somewhere. While there are widely known recycling programs for any timbers and metals that come out of the home, other materials – such as carpet and underlay – often end up in landfill.
In certain circumstances, such as where the product poses a biohazard, is extensively damaged or contaminated, this is unavoidable. However, if your underlay is simply old and has seen better days, it can be given a new life when handled properly, and our Recycle With Airstep program does just that.
When carpet underlays are removed from homes or businesses, often their only real flaw is that they’ve been there for too long and are no longer providing the benefits they were designed to. In these instances, underlay can be kept separate from other waste generated during the demolition process, and sent to us to create new underlay with.
This helps both the planet and your project’s bottom line, as it means you’ll be paying less for disposal of materials once the demolition stage is complete.
Upon arrival at our manufacturing facility in Dandenong South, old underlay is sorted to ensure that only suitable pull ups are fed into new products. Pieces that are not suitable are discarded, while those that meet hygiene and quality requirements go through our sanitation and manufacturing processes. Part of this includes steaming at a very high temperature and dicing the underlay into tiny pieces for inclusion in new products, but we can’t explain our full process for obvious reasons.
Once the old underlay is appropriately prepared, it is treated like any other ingredient in our sustainable foam underlays and gets to go on to have a new life in someone else’s home or business.
We are incredibly proud of the Recycle With Airstep initiative, and are constantly striving to provide the highest quality products while also supporting the planet. To learn more about our other projects focused on building a greener future, head over to the environment and sustainability section of our website. And if you’re wondering whether the Recycle With Airstep program is right for your next project, reach out to our friendly team for a chat.