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22. 2008 environmental review of our products

As a company we are totally committed to reducing the negative impact our activities have on the environment. This commitment is embodied in our Tread Lightly campaign, which charts our progress towards our ultimate goal of becoming an environmentally sustainable business. A key element of this campaign is to communicate our progress in a clear and unambiguous way and to avoid greenwash or mis-information. Our business is making and selling commercial carpet tiles, and much of our focus has been on reducing the negative environmental impact of our products.

• In 2008 we further increased the amount of recycled face fibre used in our products, up 0.47% from 2007 and 7.42% from 2005.
• 26.65% of all the fibre we used to make our commercial carpet tiles was recycled.
• 91.92% of all the fibre we used to make our commercial carpet tiles was solution dyed, an increase of 1.04% from 2007 and 9.34% from 2005. Solution dyeing is less detrimental to the environment than any other form of carpet dyeing.
• 43.47% of all the primary backing we used was recycled, an increase of 21.23% from 2007 and 43.47% from 2005.
• In 2008 we reduced the amount of precoat used by 19.00%, the equivalent of saving 286 tons of virgin compound.
• Overall an average of 6.00% by weight of every carpet tile we made was recycled, an increase of 0.26% from 2007 and 2.67% from 2005.

A major focus of our development activities has been towards creating a carpet tile backing that contains significant recycled material. This development is nearing completion and we expect to launch the new backing option in early 2009. This will result in a reduction of the overall weight of our products together with the substitution of virgin raw materials for recycled materials.