In Europe, the area of carpet thrown away annually is enough to cover 200,000 football pitches, and up until recently it has mostly gone into landfill sites (70%) or incinerators.

DuPont set up the INVISTA reclamation programme in 1991, the first of its kind, to reclaim and recycle old carpets. To date they have collected and recycled nearly 50,000 tonnes of used carpet and have saved over 230,000 cubic metres of landfill space. About 700 tonnes of carpet can be processed every month from over 80 collection sites in the United States.

Depending on its composition, the re-processed carpet can be used to manufacture various different products. This includes new carpet fibre, floor tiles, carpet cushion and parts for cars. About 90% of the carpet material can be recycled, even though different fibres and backings are present.

Many carpets, both industrial and domestic, are made from polyamide, more commonly called nylon. At the molecular level it is made from long, repeating patterns of atoms. The process developed and patented by DuPont uses ammonia to break the chains back into the smaller units from which they were made. The result is fresh ingredients ready to manufacture more nylon, which in turn can be used to make more carpet. This type of recycling is called "closed-loop" recycling