California carpet recovery bill could be boon for bottle-to-bottle recyclers

A new bill revamping California's carpet recycling program could have an unusual impact on plastics recycling by trying to stop some recycled bottles from being used in carpet making and instead steer them toward bottle-to-bottle recycling.

It's a small part of a much larger bill reforming the state's carpet recycling program, but it has the backing of the bottled water industry, which says bottle makers need more recycled PET to meet growing recycled-content mandates.

The carpet legislation, Assembly Bill 863, passed the California legislature by fairly wide margins Aug. 31, in the final hours of this year’s session. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to decide on vetoing the bill.

The main author of the carpet bill is Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar Curry, the body's influential majority leader.

The bill would require carpets sold in the state to have recycled content.

Some observers say the strong reaction to the bill is highlighting increased tension between industries for recycled plastic as government mandates for recycled content grow.

The International Bottled Water Association, in a letter circulated to lawmakers supporting the carpet bill, noted another California law, AB 793, requires their member companies to have 15 percent post-consumer content in their PET bottles now. That rises to 25 percent next year and 50 percent in 2030.

"The bottled water industry needs bottle-to-bottle closed-loop systems, especially as the mandate increases to 50 percent in 2030," IBWA said in the Aug. 22 letter. "However, the problem is that currently, high-quality, food-grade post-consumer plastic such as [PET] water bottles are being used in the production of carpet and called 'recycled content.'"

IBWA said that nationally, the carpet and textile industries use at least 35 percent of available recycled PET bottles.

"However, these same bottles are needed to meet closed-loop recycled content mandates as well as the voluntary pledges made by large beverage manufacturers," IBWA said. "By encouraging carpet recycled content to be from carpet, it removes the incentive of 'downcycling' of such high-quality PET and undermining California's own law to require bottle to bottle recycled content."

AB 863 would require carpets sold in California to have 5 percent recycled content by 2028 but would not allow carpet makers to count material from bottles toward that mandate.

It's designed to force carpet makers to use more recycled carpet material into new carpets.

The carpet industry can still use recycled plastic from bottles as a feedstock but could not count that toward their recycled content mandate.

The legislation, however, has run into some strong opposition from the carpet industry and others, prompting supporters of the bill to make last-minute changes Aug. 27 to scale back its provisions to move it forward.

That included reducing the amount of amount of recycled content required in carpets from an earlier version, which had called for 10 percent by 2028, 20 percent by 2032 and 30 percent by 2035.

Now the bill only sets a 5 percent level for 2028 and gives the state agency CalRecycle authority to adjust that level starting in 2029.

Heidi Sanborn, the executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council — which is the bill's sponsor — said supporters agreed to changes to focus on increasing carpet recycling in California.

One of those changes was eliminating a provision in the earlier versions of the bill that would have required a state government study of how to increase recycling of plastic and other synthetic flooring, including luxury vinyl tile.

The Aug. 27 changes dropped that provision for resilient flooring and LVT.

"We communicated with all the various interested parties and determined that in order to save California's existing recycling infrastructure, we chose to remove the other material types and their opposition to focus on what was most important, and that is getting carpets recycled in California," Sanborn said.

The state study on resilient flooring had a target of a 25 percent recycling rate for flooring by 2030, possibly by creating the nation's first extended producer responsibility system for flooring. The flooring industry would have been required to pay into that.

That plan received strong pushback from the Resilient Floor Covering Institute at a June legislative hearing, where RFCI said it wanted to work on improving recycling but said the discussions with Aguiar Curry and her allies had been too rushed.

RFCI did not respond to a request for comment on the latest changes.

Sanborn plans to continue pushing for the resilient flooring industry to have much better recycling or end-of-life management of their materials. Earlier versions of AB 863 also would have put requirements on the plastic artificial turf industry.

California has had a carpet recycling program since 2011, with fees assessed to consumers, but the resilient flooring industry faces no such requirement.

That has translated to a 35 percent recycling rate for California carpet in 2023, compared with less than 5 percent for flooring and artificial turf materials, according to a June analysis from a state legislative office.

Sanborn argued it's not sustainable to have recycling and end-of-life requirements on carpeting but not on other types of flooring, which are often sold by the same companies.

"We cannot have many of the same companies that make carpet, which is now basically 100 percent recyclable in California, selling a competing product that is quickly gaining market share that has no end-of-life plan other than disposal," she said. "That's not sustainable and not where California is headed as no one wants to live next to a landfill or incinerator.

"Resilient flooring will be addressed soon and my hope is that the industry is now aware they need to do something and will begin to work on designing for circularity," she said.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers said it's backing AB 863 as a way to increase recycling.

"This type of bill is a step in the right direction to just increase overall plastics recycling," said Kate Bailey, APR chief policy officer. "At the 30,000-foot level we need more plastics recycled. That's not just packaging, it's carpet and flooring and many other applications. It's going to take a lot more recycling of a lot more plastics to reduce plastic waste and reduce plastic pollution and build that circular economy."

But Bailey also said that APR has concerns about the bottle language that could be seen as steering recycled plastic toward or away from specific markets.

"We have concerns about the bottle provision in particular," she said. "Our position is that we need diverse, robust markets for recycled resins. We don't want to specifically say these materials can only be used for this purpose because markets are cyclical, and they are boom or bust."

Bailey said APR believes it would be better to focus raising recycling rates "rather than fighting over too small of a pie in general."

"I want to emphasize that when bottles are used in carpet, that is still recycling and that's offsetting the use of virgin plastic, so it is still moving in the right direction," she said.

But she said APR still supports the bill as a step in the right direction.

"More recycled content is better, we need stronger markets," Bailey said. "You don't always get what you want in the political process, so we're OK with where this [bill] is."