Kokuyo Engineering Co., a subsidiary of Kokuyo Co., Japan‘‘s largest manufacturer and marketer of office equipment and stationery, put Recycled Carpet Tiles onto the market on April 1, 2004. This carpet is claimed to be environment-friendly as it is made of recycled material from discarded carpet tiles.

Carpet tiles discarded during office remodeling or for other reasons usually wind up in landfills as industrial waste. Gomisho Inc., an industrial waste disposal contractor in Osaka, has developed a new recycling technology to separate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from other materials, which makes it possible to reduce the amount of industrial waste ultimately discarded.

Regardless of the manufacturer, used carpet tiles are collected through Kokuyo‘‘s nationwide sales channels for office furniture, and will be recycled into refined powder in Gomisho‘‘s recycling plant. Recycled Carpet Tiles use as backing a product called Refined Back, a sheet of 100 per cent recycled PVC material. Kokuyo is marketing this carpet widely, not only to users who supplied the used carpets for recycling, but also to government offices and other companies very interested in environmental management.

The annual sales target for fiscal 2004 is 100 million yen (about US$960,000). This resource recycling system can reduce the amount of industrial waste sent to landfills. In addition, in manufacturing carpet backing, using recycled material can reduce energy consumption by 98.8 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions by 99.8 per cent compared to using virgin material. Manufacturing one tonne of PVC compound produces backing for about 340 square meters of carpet tiles.