Mannington To Recycle 3M Olympic Graphics Into Flooring

Approximately 200,000-square-feet of the vinyl graphics will be diverted from a landfill.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 2/18/2010 12:00:00 AM

If recycling was an Olympic sport, Mannington Commercial would win the gold medal. The Calhoun, Georgia-based flooring manufacturer is once again bolstering its green bona fides with its latest plan—a joint project with 3M Canada to turn the international technology company's vinyl graphics for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games into flooring.

Approximately 200,000 of the graphics—seen everywhere from main venues like the Richmond Olympic Oval and the Pacific Coliseum to official Olympic vehicles—will be diverted from the landfill and remanufactured as the Mannington's Premium Tile for use in commercial healthcare, education, and retail applications—or other eco-sensitive setting.

"We learned about Mannington's precedent for recycling mixed waste similar to our graphic materials into flooring," says Richard Chartrand, vice president of 3M Canada's display and graphics business. Most recycling facilities would quickly turn away from the colorful, irregular-shaped lumps that the graphics result in after use, but Mannington was up for the challenge." 

As we have innovated to grow our recycling capabilities, we have been looking for waste streams to increase the amount of post-consumer content that we can use in our products," adds John Emmons, director of commercial manufacturing at Mannington. "The arrangement was not only a great way to support this 3M Canada initiative; it also made very good business sense."



Images courtesy of Mannington Commercial.