Can Carpet Be Recycled? Environmentally Friendly Options Nearly all types of carpet can be recycled, but the process may not be as simple as putting your old carpet out for curbside recycling. Because carpet is made from so many layers of materials, including fibers and plastics, they don’t degrade easily in landfills. Many municipalities won’t even accept carpets if you toss them out with your other household trash for this exact reason. Instead, you may have to take them to a designated waste disposal site. Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), a joint industry-government non-profit whose mission is to develop carpet recycling solutions, estimates that 5 billion pounds of carpet were sent to landfills in 2017. There, they can leach toxic chemicals into the soil and groundwater and release greenhouse gases for hundreds of years until they finally degrade. Recycling carpet is a much more sustainable option. Carpet recyclers break them down into raw materials and process those material