Carpet recycling fee system reset for California

The Dalton, Georgia-based group Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) says the state of California is proceeding with a carpet differential assessment plan that will take effect in the Golden State on April 1, 2022.

The plan, codified in California Assembly Bill (AB) 729, requires carpet buyers to pay one of four levels of assessment, calculated by carpet type and recycled content percentage. The law requires CARE, as the carpet stewardship organization for the state, to implement the differential assessment on each square yard of carpet in a way designed to reflect its cost burden to recycle.

CARE’s proposed differential assessment plan, which CalRecycle has conditionally approved, is based on two factors: carpet materials, as in broadloom compared with tile, and percent of postconsumer content, as in greater than or equal to 10 percent postconsumer content, and less than 10 percent postconsumer content. The new assessments replace a previous one  of 35 cents per square yard for all

“This assessment change undoubtedly is a burden for the approximately 2,000 California retailers and 79 carpet mills with operations in the state,” says CARE Executive Director Bob Peoples. “CARE is working with retailers, mills, distributors and software companies to clarify and ease the transition. The good news is that the assessment is not increasing for broadloom carpet and will even go down slightly for broadloom containing more than 10 percent post-consumer content.”