Circular Economy

What It Really Takes to Design for Circularity

We hope that by sharing our approach, we’ll continue to inspire other companies to take similar action — driving more climate progress across their organization and the world.

Brand Provided | By Liz Minné | Published 2 months ago | About a 7 minute read

Image: Interface

Since 1994, Interface has been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to meet our climate commitments and encouraging others to do the same through cross-industry collaboration and partnerships. Our motto? If we can do it, anyone can. But it took us decades to get here, and we’re open about the lessons we’ve learned along the way — both good and bad.

In 2024, we entered a new era of our sustainability journey as we went ‘all in’ on our goal to be carbon negative by 2040. We’re committed to repurposing former offset investments to accelerate innovation projects that will result in direct carbon reductions and storage both internally and throughout our supply chain.

We’re focused on avoiding, reducing and storing more carbon than ever before by targeting our biggest decarbonization opportunity: aligning our product lifecycles with circularity strategies. The hope is that by sharing our approach, we’ll continue to inspire others in the flooring industry and beyond to take similar action — driving more climate progress across their organization and the world.

Why product matters

Buildings generate 42% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and carpet has the highest carbon footprint of any design material used. For Interface, our products account for 85% of our company’s carbon footprint — so, lowering the impact of our full product portfolio is necessary to reach our goals and help our customers do the same.

A circular economy will play a critical role in shaping a low-carbon future. And by effectively keeping resources in cycle, we can address the carbon impact of our products and push the flooring industry away from the typical “take-make-waste” manufacturing model. We approach circularity in three phases:

Raw materials
Installation and longevity
End of life

Each phase presents its own challenges and opportunities, which we continue to address across our three product categories — carpet tile, luxury vinyl tile (LVT), and nora® rubber.

Raw materials: Collaborating for scalable impact

Material choices matter. We’re constantly examining the makeup of our products to determine where we can drive additional carbon reductions while also prioritizing design and performance.

By investing in new, low-carbon raw materials — including recycled, bio-based or captured-carbon materials — we’ve seen significant carbon reductions across each of our product categories: down 35% for carpet tile, 46% for LVT, and 21% for rubber since 2019. Still, our continued progress requires broader industry change.

Challenge: The biggest raw material challenge today? Limited availability of low-carbon, recycled and bio-based materials at scale. While innovation is underway, the industry still leans heavily on virgin, fossil-fuel-based materials.
Our approach: We’ve seen the importance of collective action play out first-hand. Years ago, Interface partnered with Aquafil to develop ECONYL® regenerated nylon, which is made from 100% waste — such as old carpet, textile scraps, industrial plastics, fishing nets, etc. It performs the same as virgin nylon and can be recollected and regenerated repeatedly. Our partnership helped create demand, and today ECONYL is used as a lower-carbon option by well-known fashion and interiors brands including Prada, Burberry, adidas and others. This success took years of R&D to create a closed-loop system and an alternative that performs just as well as virgin nylon.
Opportunity: Supplier engagement is key. By working closely with suppliers to identify reduction and storage opportunities, manufacturers can collaborate and co-develop sustainable materials. Beyond our Aquafil partnership, we’ve recently announced our partnership with a key supplier to use captured carbon in our carpet tile manufacturing in the US and Europe. The material has the potential to lower the carbon impact of end-user products far beyond flooring; but for captured-carbon materials to scale, it needs wider adoption across industries.

Installation & longevity: Designing for durability and circularity

Reuse, replacement and longevity are some of the most important considerations when designing products for circularity. We engineer our flooring solutions to last longer, stand up to the demands of today’s interior spaces, and be reused and recycled. But we know there’s still more to do.

Challenge: Different product categories present different obstacles for installation and longevity. For example, our nora rubber products offer a lifecycle between 40 and 50 years. But vulcanization makes end-of-life recycling a challenge. And while our LVT products are also designed for longevity, removal can damage the product — limiting the potential for reuse or recycling.
Our approach: Carpet tile has been our biggest success story. 25 years ago, we introduced i2™ — a design approach inspired by how nature would design a floor. Each carpet tile in that portfolio blends with the next, no matter when it is purchased or installed. This randomness in design eliminates concerns with matching colors, simplifies maintenance costs, and makes it easy to replace tiles without the concern of storing replacement stock. Our TacTiles™ glue-free installation method further enables the reuse and replacement of individual tiles without the need to update an entire space.
Opportunity: We understand the importance of designing for reuse and longevity to support circularity. And we’ve already taken important steps to support this across each of our product categories. It’s clear that there’s still room to grow in this area, especially for LVT and nora. And by applying the lessons we’ve learned, we can continue to keep resources in cycle for our products and reduce our climate impacts.

End of life: Take-back as a solution, but only with collective buy-in

Creating a circular economy for our business is essential to meet our goal of becoming carbon negative by 2040. And the final piece of the circularity puzzle is to develop end-of-life solutions that effectively take back products for reuse and recycling.

Challenge: Take-back programs are not a new phenomenon, but they are difficult to develop and scale. Limited industry awareness and fragmented logistics means there is no standard way to design a take-back program. And even if you have an effective one, some industries are stuck in their beliefs that asking end users to change their behavior when a product reaches its end of life is going to be an uphill battle.
Our approach: At Interface, we find a new use for used flooring that customers return to us through our ReEntry™ Reclamation and Recycling program. Options include reuse, recycling or energy recovery. The direct reuse of post-consumer carpet tile is always the priority for ReEntry. We continue to work with our customers and partners around the world to support the reuse of flooring. For example, we collaborate with CVS Health to divert used carpet from their retail locations from the landfill at time of replacement.
Opportunity: Even robust take-back programs face inconsistent participation. While designers have embraced the ReEntry program, we’re always focused on driving more awareness so that we can take back more product. We actively encourage our customers to send back their used flooring and collaborate on unique solutions to provide take-back solutions that support their goals. Circularity doesn’t work without collaboration across the value chain. And there are lots of opportunities for further education about these programs, both with supply chain partners and end users.

An ongoing journey

We’re ‘all in’ on carbon negative by 2040, and lowering our product carbon footprints is essential to getting there. But lasting change comes from more than our own actions — it comes from inspiring others to do the same. True progress cannot happen alone. It requires transparency, partnership and collective action.