Created: 4/7/2008 7:22:05 AM 
Undated -- It's getting harder and harder to sweep our environmental problems under the rug. So why not weave them into the fabric? Here, at Mohawk Carpet. They're turning plastic drink bottles into carpet.
Mohawk uses 14 thousand plastic drink bottles every minute, about a third of all the recycled bottles in the US according to the company, to make Everstrand Carpet.
Mohawk buys the old bottles by the bale. They are broken up, sorted by color,then chipped, cleaned, melted. Then they're molded into threads and spun into yarn.
Plastic bottles are a huge environmental problem. An environmental advocacy group, Food and Water Watch, says each year, the bottles used for water alone consume 47 million gallons of oil and generate one and a half million tons of waste. But the bottles are high quality plastic- that make great carpet at the same cost.
But Americans only recycle about one in four of the plastic bottles they use. Sadly, our landfills are carpeted with a solution that is going to waste.
CNN
