It is a bare fact that in Europe each year 1.6 million tons of carpet waste ends up in landfills (70%) or in municipal waste incinerators (MWI's). The combination of this fact with the growing legislative pressure in the European Community to move away from landfilling, and to stimulate the material, chemical, and thermal recycling of waste (in that order of priority), were the main reasons to start with the RECAM (Recycling of Carpet Materials) project.
Looking to its overall composition, carpet waste contains a lot of valuable raw materials, such as polymers (PA-6, PA-6,6, PET, PP), natural fibres (wool), and inorganic fillers (CaCO3 or chalk). The challenge was to develop a system that not only gives a technical possibility to reuse these materials (either as a material, a chemical feedstock, or as energy), but which also is better for the environment (lower emissions and less depletion of non-renewable natural resources), and economically acceptable. The latter means that the costs of the system may be higher than present day landfilling costs, but can be competitive on the longer term with the costs of MWI's
In the course of the project, parts of the first blueprint of the system have been changed and the scheme has been simplified, because it appeared that a number of options had a low technical and/or economical feasibility.