The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) said it supports Shaw Industries' investment in GeoHay, a company that produces erosion control and storm water management products made of 100 percent recycled carpet. CARE Executive Director Georgina Sikorski applauded the carpet manufacturer's investment, calling it "an important step in ensuring continued diversion of post-consumer carpet from the nation's landfills."

“This is new territory for Shaw,” said Vance Bell, Shaw ceo. “But with more than 3.5 billion pounds of post-consumer carpet ending up in landfills every year, we know we must look beyond the traditional flooring industry for additional solutions.”

Shaw’s investment in GeoHay diversifies the company's portfolio of uses for post-consumer and post-industrial carpet fiber. Shaw gathers more than 100 million pounds of post-consumer carpet per year from its national collection network.

“Shaw's post-consumer carpet reclamation program and its commitment to sustainability through innovation makes them an ideal investment partner as we look to the future and our need to support a continued rapid growth rate,” noted Dan Hargett, GeoHay's ceo.

Last year, GeoHay was installed at a construction site along the Foothills Parkway in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; along Walton County, Fla., beaches during the Gulf Oil spill; and as part of a habitat-reclamation project for the endangered Cold Water Darter fish on North Georgia's Conasauga River, among other projects.

“Further growth and usage of GeoHay will help CARE achieve its mission of reducing post-consumer carpet going into the landfill, increasing recycling and finding market-based solutions for the use of post-consumer carpet,” Sikorski added.