VC Star
By David Goldstein
March 1st
With two simultaneous grand openings Monday on opposite sides of Ventura County, local carpet recycling capacity will triple.
The Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center, with a public event Monday afternoon, and Gold Coast Recycling and Transfer Station in Ventura, with a private event in the morning, will join Oxnard’s Del Norte Regional Recycling and Transfer Station in offering free drop-off of carpet and carpet pad.
Carpet and carpet pad must be delivered separate from other discards. Both the Simi Valley and the Oxnard sites offer free carpet recycling for both commercial and residential customers, while the Ventura site will be free only for residents.
Despite carpet collection that is free for drop-off in Ventura County, the actual carpet recycling process is expensive.
Sorting bulky rolls by fiber type, separating components of carpet and using reclaimed materials to manufacture new products requires a lot of labor. Hauling from Ventura County to distant recyclers, such as Los Angeles Fiber in Vernon, is also expensive. The program is possible due to a subsidy paid to recyclers from a nonprofit led by the carpet industry called Carpet America Recovery Effort, or CARE.
In Ventura County, the single site in Oxnard that started with CARE funding in 2017 was not accessible enough to the population east of the Conejo Grade. For years, and most recently through CARE’s local government task force, the county Recycling Market Development Zone, which I administer, had been requesting CARE funding for additional sites above the nonprofit’s minimum statutory requirements.
Three months ago, CARE offered one additional site to Ventura County and asked me to secure the best deal possible from a host site. Host sites must commit labor and space for receiving the carpet and loading it into trailers. Not all such sites are generous enough to accept this carpet free. However, WM at the Simi Valley Landfill and then Harrison Industries at Gold Coast Recycling offered to meet this standard set when we first opened carpet recycling at Oxnard’s Del Norte center in 2017. With two such great new offers, CARE agreed to support both, tripling Ventura County’s carpet recycling capacity.
Bob Hawse, owner of Hawse Abbey Carpet & Floor in Simi Valley, and Gilbert Sauceda, sales associate at Ventura Flooring 101, both said other flooring types are displacing carpet, but
recyclability could add to carpet’s strong selling points. Both pointed out that carpet is soft, quiet and warm. Hawse added: “Carpet is also good on stairs to avoid slippage.”
In the commercial sector, carpet tiles, rather than carpet rolls, help meet waste reduction goals. Commercial and public buildings, including the Ventura County Government Center, use flooring made from carpet squares with nearly flat pile. If a spill or other mishap damages part of the carpet, replacement can be limited to just the damaged squares. The rest of the carpet can continue to be used.
The public is invited to attend the carpet recycling opening at 2 p.m. Monday at WM’s Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center, 2801 Madera Road.
David Goldstein, an environmental resource analyst with the Ventura County Public Works Agency, can be reached at 805-658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org
