Our Plastic Bottle Story Is A Recycling Triumph

The Beauty of EverStrand™ Collection Also Keeps Our Planet Beautiful

Open since 1999, Mohawk operates the world’s largest integrated plastic bottle recycling facility located in Summerville, Georgia.

The U.S. recycles 30 percent of its plastic bottles, and Mohawk purchases 25 percent of these, totaling 215 million pounds each year.

Trying to envision this many bottles may be difficult. Consider all of the 20 oz. plastic soda bottles stacked from end to end, each bottle approximately nine inches tall.

The resulting height is 6,926 Empire State Buildings stacked from end to end- now that’s a lot of bottles!

Mohawk recycles these plastic bottles to make polyethylene terephthalate (PET) carpet fiber.

A state-of-the-art process sorts the plastic bottles, chops up the plastic into little chips, vigorously cleans the chips and then melts them into polyester resin. The fiber is cut and shipped to Mohawk carpet manufacturing facilities to make carpet sold as part of the Mohawk EverStrand™ collection.

The face fiber of EverStrand™ carpet is made of 100 percent post-consumer content.

And it doesn’t end there, each part of the plastic bottle is reused. The caps and labels are transformed into other useful products such as plastic carpet cores.

The best plastic bottles for making carpet have a “1” or “PET” symbol on the bottom. So be sure to recycle!