Product Stewardship | ReEntry

There are many claims about recycling in our industry and it can be hard to separate fact from fiction, rumor from reality. "Recyclable" is often just a promise, especially in New Zealand. Every day tonnes of flooring is discarded in New Zealand. Most of it ending up in landfill and often, when it is nowhere near the end of its useful life.

Why are “we” throwing away a valuable resource?

Interface values the materials that are used to create their high quality flooring products and have designed them to have a circular life-cycle.

Each year Interface diverts millions of Kg's of used, post-consumer carpet from landfills around the world. That's tonnes and tonnes of carbon saved from polluting the environment. As the New Zealand supplier for Interface, Inzide are proud to be supporting this product stewardship initiative called, ReEntry.

Since February 17th 2009, Inzide has returned 516 tonnes of carpet tile to Interface. We remain the only New Zealand flooring supplier with an active, voluntary Ministry for Environment accredited product stewardship scheme in place.

In the first instance, where possible we re-use flooring that has life left to give, putting it to good use – by making sure it is gifted to charities, local businesses and others who need support.

Carpet tiles that are not suitable for Re-use are returned to Interface where they are stripped back to the material layers and introduced to the manufacturing materials stream used to create “new” carpet tiles.

Nothing goes to landfill.

Fisher and Paykel

Fisher & Paykel have just changed the flooring in their Stewart Building to Aerial Flying Colours by Interface.

The 6,580m2 of Interface carpet tiles which had been down for 19 years (installed in 2004 with Approximations Heron) were cleaned, uplifted and returned to Inzide before being containerised, fumigated and shipped back to Interface Australia.

We have a bit more to clear out of the Stewart Building before we issue the recycling certificate to Warren & Mahoney and F&P Healthcare for close to 70 tonnes of recycling.

How do I recycle through ReEntry?

Step One – Assessment

​An Inzide Account Manager will visit the site and assess the tiles to see if they are suitable for re-use opportunities or if they are more suitable for recycling.

Clean, full sized Interface GlasBac or CushionBacRe carpet tiles and Interface LVT can be recycled through ReEntry out of New Zealand. (We are unable to recycle competitor’s tiles, as there is no way of proving the contents for export declaration requirements.)

Step Two – Uplift

Customer to organise contractor to uplift the product and package according to our Recycling Guidelines.

Step Three – Drop off

Contractor to arrange delivery of uplifted product to 1 of the 3 Inzide collection depots NZ wide;

1. Auckland: Inzide Commercial Warehouse, 131 Montgomerie Rd, Airport Oaks, Mangere.
2. Wellington: Owens Logistics, 5-7 Toop Street, Seaview.
3. Christchurch: Owens Logistics, 31 Baigent Way, Middleton.

Call 0800 800 656 or email sales@inzide.co.nz to arrange

Step Four – Shipping

Inzide arranges the Re-use of the tiles with community groups or Habitat for Humanity if the tiles are suitable. HOwever if it is not, then transportation of the clean, uplifted, palletised flooring is arranged and to be shipped to Interface for processing.

Step Five – Recycling

The carpet tile or LVT goes through the proprietary recycling process at the Interface Mill.

It is split into two key inputs for the carpet tile manufacturing process, sheared yarn and backing granules. The yarn then goes back into the yarn production stream and the backing granules are included in the production of the GlasBac and CushionBacRE backings with an extremely high-recycled content %, ready to live out another 15 years on the floor.

Learn More about ReEntry