Recycled materials are often of lower quality than the
materials from which they were derived. Now the cradle-to-cradle recycling
concept has been applied to carpets to deliver high-quality recycled material.
Twenty five years ago, the German chemist Michael Braungart
developed a new approach to recycling, now called "Cradle to Cradle"
or "C2C" after the book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make
Things, which he and the American architect William McDonough published in
2002. Their basic idea is that the recycling process should start with the
initial design of products. “We are trying to make sure that the materials that
are used for a product can be used again after the product has finished its
useful life,” says Wolfgang Schönknecht, a researcher at Environmental
Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA), based in Hamburg, Germany.