Greenville, S.C. — Aquafil USA Inc. has named named CARE Recycler of the Year by the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), which encourages the reuse the raw materials from post-consumer carpet.
Cartersville, Ga.-based Aquafil USA was honored for its Econyl system, which creates nylon 6 fibers from post-consumer carpet and abandoned fishing nets in a continuous production cycle. The company received the honor at CARE's annual conference in Greenville.
CARE also named two Persons of the Year: Rocky Ponders and Robert Goldberg of Columbia Recycling Corp. According to the trade group, they “transformed their company's business model, expanding post-industrial and post-consumer carpet recycling over the past 36 years. As a result, they increased employment from fewer than 25 employees to over 500 people. Rocky and Robert led the company's growth into production of melt filtered pellets for the compounding industry, and the production of carpet cushion manufacturing, using recycled carpet components.”
Since 2002, CARE has diverted more than 4 billion pounds of carpet from landfills in the United States.