Carpet recycling: Determining the reverse production system design

Roughly 4 billion pounds of carpet are disposed of in the United States eac h year. This carpet is composed of a significant fraction of nylon, polypro pylene, and polyester fiber. A key limiting factor to recycling is effectiv e design and development of the reverse production system to collect and re process this large volume of valuable material. A reverse production system is composed of material and chemical recycling functional elements interco nnected by transportation steps. In this article, we develop a mixed-intege r programming model to support decision-making in reverse production system design. To illustrate its use and applicability, we apply the model to a r epresentative U.S, carpet recycling industrial case study. The overall econ omic feasibility of recycling is strongly dependent on the volumes that can be expected from investments in collection infrastructure. The geographic location of processing centers influences the network economics, and the su bdivision of recycling tasks to avoid the shipment of low value material is proposed as an effective strategy for carpet recycling.