Step 2: Altro Recycling

Altro invented safety flooring in 1955 and as a pioneering company, whose foundations are built on a culture of innovation, we wanted to be the first to recycle the product.

Previously it was considered that recycling safety flooring was impossible, due to the abrasive nature of the aggregates that afford its signature slip resistance and durability. These aggregates are some of the hardest materials next to diamond. Any recycling equipment would wear too quickly and make the recycling process too expensive, so in the past it has always been cheaper to throw it into landfill.

Thanks to substantial inves™ent and pioneering innovation, Altro has installed the world's first in-house safety flooring recycling system. This enables us to recycle 100% of factory waste PVC, diverting it from landfill.

In 2009, Altro launched the world's first products to contain safety flooring recyclate. Altro Walkway™/VM20, Altro Impressionist ™ II/ IP20 and Altro Stronghold™ /K30 now contain 10% post-industrial waste recycled content in the form of PVC chip. This brings the total recycled content of these products up to 20%. All other Altro safety flooring products contain up to 10% post-consumer waste as an integral raw material. The use of recycled materials in our safety flooring products preserves valuable landfill space and also uses less energy compared to virgin raw materials, which reduces the carbon footprint of our products significantly.

As one of two founder members of Recofloor – the UK’s vinyl take back scheme, we are now collecting and recycling post-installation waste off-cuts from flooring contractors, waste transfer stations, PFI sites and drop-off points. The collected waste is recycled back into new Altro safety flooring products. Currently, we are investigating cost-effective ways of collecting and recycling post-consumer uplifted flooring waste.

In addition to this, we are also members of EPFLOOR and are working with Vinyl 2010 (the European PVC Voluntary Commi™ent to the European Commission). Vinyl 2010 has targets of recycling 200,000 tonnes of post-consumer PVC by 2010. All progress is monitored independently and documentation is available at www.vinyl2010.org.