Op-Ed

Recyclability of Nylon (and response)

I really support

EBN and eagerly anticipate reading it. Your articles are very careful about stating supported facts and not just passing along marketing hype. However, I call your attention to the June 2003 (

Vol. 12, No. 6) article “Honeywell Controls the Nylon 6 Market”: The article ends with the statement “Nylon 6 is inherently more recyclable than nylon 6,6.” Some facts you might consider:

For several years both DuPont and Wellman have operated commercial operations to collect post-consumer carpet, separate out the nylon 66 carpet, and recycle the nylon 66 back into engineered resins. Wellman’s post-consumer recycled-content (PC-RC) nylon 66 is third-party certified by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). The DuPont reclamation process is certified by SCS and we are working on getting our PC-RC nylon 66 certified as well. We have two other methods of recycling nylon 66: one can take it back to virgin quality; however, the engineered resin process is currently the environmentally preferable way to handle the post-consumer materials we collect. We are not aware of a successful project to recycle post-consumer nylon 6 that has been certified by a third party.

Even though we, DuPont, have a viable recycling process in place, we do not claim that nylon 66 or our Antron fibers are recyclable. The reason is that the FTC guidelines for recyclability require that you do not mislead your customers as to the availability or scope of your recycling process. Once the size and availability of our operation expands to reach a large percentage of the materials we make, then we will consider the “recyclable” claim.

I cringe when I here manufacturers claim “recyclability” when they make billions of pounds of stuff but only recycle a few thousand pounds. We believe that sustainability goes well beyond recyclability, or recycled content, and that total environmental impact, incorporating key life-cycle evaluations, is the most comprehensive measure of product sustainability.

Mark Ryan

DuPont Textiles and Interiors

Kennesaw, Georgia

Editor’s Response:Thank you for calling us to task on this issue. We made that statement based on the fact that, in principle, nylon 6 is more amenable to a true closed-loop recycling process (based on depolymerization and repolymerization) than is nylon 6,6. In practice, as you say, neither is recycled with enough consistency to be called “recyclable” in the marketplace.

Published September 1, 2003

(2003, September 1). Recyclability of Nylon (and response). Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/op-ed/recyclability-nylon-and-response

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