Interface Rolls Out Carbon-Storing Carpet

Tons and tons of carpet can go into a single building project—only to be ripped out and replaced a few years down the road. Carpet is almost always a fossil-fuel-based product and rarely gets reused or recycled. Its carbon footprint accumulates over the lifetime of a building as the carpeting is replaced multiple times.

Interface, after years of research and development, is trying to solve these problems with a new carpet tile it claims is carbon negative. Its backing, CQuestBioX, stores enough carbon to more than offset the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire carpet tile. This is possible due to changes to the yarn and tufting process in addition to biobased and recycled-content backing fillers.

“After it is made, there is less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than if the tile had not been manufactured in the first place,” according to an Interface press release.

Because of the rollout of this new tile, the United Nations recently gave the company a Climate Action award. The award acknowledges not only the production of the new carbon-negative carpet tile but also the company’s Climate Take Back commitment, which aims for completely carbon-negative operations by 2040.

Correction: This article was corrected on December 8, 2020. The name of Interface’s commitment is Climate Take Back, not Carbon Take Back.

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