Runner rPET

PET plastic bottles are rugged, watertight and durable: Although they're produced in ever larger numbers, only a fraction of them are recycled. This gave Tina and Asad Mirza from the Hamburg design label "liv interior" the idea to make carpets from recycled PET bottles (rPET). Carpets made from a material with those characteristics have a much wider range of application compared with carpets made from natural feedstock like cotton or virgin wool. They are insusceptible to dampness, and nothing will happen to them if something spills during a meal. And if they're used on the balcony or terrace the rPET-carpets will live through a downpour. They can be wiped clean or be put in the washer up 40 °C and are dry again in a flash. They have an agreeable haptic, too: Your feet can barely tell the difference between an rPET carpet and a cotton one. The rPET carpets seem to be a little more tightly woven than usual carpets and feel astonishingly soft.

The carpets are made in India. The PET bottles collected there are mechanically reduced in recycling machines, the remnants from labels and other residues removed, and the material is then melted and stretched into long threads. These threads can be twisted like natural materials into yarn and wound on spools. 100 to 750 recycled PET bottles are used for one carpet. The carpets are hand-woven, so small deviations in the size of ±5% can occur, and on the reverse side occasionally knotted thread ends can be found which occur when a thread is changed. These aspects do not affect the quality of the carpet.
The rPET carpets are certified by GoodWeave, a non-profit organisation active against forced labour and child exploitation in the carpet industry: GoodWeave helps children who have worked in carpet weaving mills with retraining and rehabilitation.