Recycling & Sustainability
Construction and demolition generate about one-third of global waste, and flooring makes up a significant share. All County Flooring is ReStart® Ready through Tarkett Commercial and participates in a third-party-certified take-back and reclamation program. This program diverts old flooring from landfills and often costs less than traditional disposal.
All County Flooring invites public works agencies, educational institutions, and corporate businesses to participate in this global take-back and recycling initiative. The program collects vinyl, linoleum, carpet tiles, and hybrid carpeting, diverting them from landfill. This helps customers reduce waste, lower carbon emissions, and meet sustainability goals and certifications.
Recycling old flooring costs less than landfilling it
There's a common assumption that recycling old flooring is the expensive option. According to the program's 2024 cost analysis, the opposite is true. Across major U.S. markets, sending material to the recycling program was less expensive than landfilling it in every location studied — an average saving of 26%, ranging from 17% to 34% depending on the market.
Here's how that breaks down on a typical 4,000-yard California project, which works out to roughly 28,000 pounds of material — about 14 tons, or three full dumpsters:
- Landfill route: approximately $2,500 in dumpster rental and tipping fees
- Recycling route: approximately $1,960 in labor to stack, palletize, and prepare the material
- Freight to the recycling facility: paid by the manufacturer, not by you
- Recycling fees: none
- Net saving: about 17%
Pricing varies by County and Region.
The only cost you carry is the labor to prepare and palletize the old flooring, which appears as a line item in our bid. It has consistently come in below what dumpster rental and tipping fees would cost.
What we can take back
The program accepts any type of deinstalled flooring, from any manufacturer, as long as it's free of asbestos. That includes carpet, carpet tile, vinyl, and post-installation offcuts — not just material from a single brand. If you're replacing a competitor's twenty-year-old carpet, it still qualifies.
Your Landfill Diversion Certificate
Every participating project receives a Landfill Diversion Certificate documenting the exact volume of material kept out of the landfill.
That certificate is worth more than a nice gesture. It's documentation you can put to work — hang it in the lobby, take it to your board or district office, or include it in LEED submissions, CALGreen compliance, and agency sustainability reporting. For public agencies and school districts with diversion targets, it turns a routine flooring replacement into a measurable contribution toward those goals.
How it works
- We assess the existing flooring during the walkthrough and confirm it qualifies
- Demolition and removal happen as part of the normal project schedule
- Our crews stack and palletize the old material on site
- The manufacturer arranges and pays for freight to the nearest recycling facility
- The material is processed into raw material for new flooring
- You receive your Landfill Diversion Certificate
You don't arrange disposal, coordinate haulers, or track paperwork. It's handled as part of the job.
Why it matters on public and institutional work
California public agencies, school districts, and healthcare systems increasingly carry landfill diversion requirements and sustainability reporting obligations. Most flooring contractors don't address this at all — the old floor goes in a dumpster and that's the end of it.
We'd rather give you something to report. Diverting material costs less, produces documentation you can use, and contributes to targets your organization is likely already tracking.
More than 2.1 million pounds of old flooring were diverted through this program across North America in 2024.
California's carpet stewardship program
California also operates a statewide carpet stewardship program overseen by CalRecycle, and we work within it where that's the right path for a project. Either way, the goal is the same: material out of the landfill, documentation in your hands.
Ready to get the floor in motion?
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