California records all-time high annual carpet recycling rate in 2024

Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) has submitted the California Carpet Stewardship Program's 2024 Annual Report to CalRecycle, reporting an all-time high annual recycling rate of 38.5 percent in 2024.

The rate exceeds the anticipated goal of 34 percent, with the report also outlining continued year-over-year growth.

Throughout the year, the state collected more than 82.7 million pounds of carpet, 90.5 percent of which were recycled. From 2021 to 2024, the state saw a 249 percent increase in pounds of used carpet sent for reuse, totaling 2.9 million pounds in 2024.

Three hundred ninety collection points, including 159 CARE public drop-off sites, also contributed to the record-high rate, according to Dalton, Georgia-based CARE. In 2024, 30 vendors incorporated recycled carpet materials across 113 products.

Additionally, the CARE California Carpet Stewardship Program provided 15 grants totaling $881,000 distributed across 14 entities and statewide initiatives aimed to expand convenient collection while navigating fiber identification efforts and difficult-to-recycle postconsumer carpet components.

"We are very proud of the progress this program has made in diverting carpet from landfill and recycling it into new products,” CARE Executive Director Bob Peoples says. “Our efforts at growing collection, reuse, recycling and innovations in market development have paid off.

"Recyclers have collected more than 1.3 billion pounds of old carpet in California since the program started. 2025 is well-ahead of our recycling rate goal, despite the toughest market conditions since the financial crisis of 2008."