When people hear the word recyclable, they often think about what happens after a product is thrown away. In reality, recyclability starts during product design. The choices we make about materials, construction and installation determine whether a product can become a valuable raw material at the end of its life or whether it ends up as waste.
Designing for recyclability is an essential part of building a more circular economy, where materials stay in use for longer and the need for virgin raw materials is reduced.
If you wait until a product reaches the end of its life to think about recycling, it's already too late.Recyclability is often confused with recycled content, but they are two different concepts. A product made from recycled material is not automatically recyclable, just as a recyclable product does not necessarily contain recycled content.
For Beaulieu, recyclability means designing products that can be collected, sorted and transformed into new raw materials once they are no longer needed. Products made from a single material are generally much easier to recycle than products made of multiple permanently bonded materials.
Good product design alone, however, is not enough. Recycling also depends on collection systems, recycling infrastructure and customers recycling products at the end of their life. Circularity is a shared responsibility across the entire value chain.
To improve recyclability, you first need a consistent way to measure it. Because no universal definition exists, Beaulieu developed its own recyclability guidelines based on internationally recognized standards and industry recommendations.
Every product receives a recyclability rating, helping our innovation teams design better products and assess the existing portfolio.
Today, around 83% of Beaulieu's manufactured products are considered recyclable. Looking only at finished products such as flooring and construction solutions, that figure is 46%. While there is still work to do, these insights provide a clear roadmap for continuous improvement.
Several products already demonstrate what designing for recyclability can achieve.
Rewind, Beaulieu's event flooring solution, was developed as a mono-material product so it can be collected after use, recycled and transformed into new raw material. Combined with a dedicated take-back program, it shows how product design and logistics work together to close the loop.
Verdite, Beaulieu's artificial grass solution, uses materials from the same polymer family for both the backing and the grass, making it significantly easier to recycle than traditional artificial grass systems.
Other Beaulieu businesses are making similar progress. Plastic sheet solutions and several flooring products are being designed to simplify recycling by reducing material complexity and avoiding permanent adhesives wherever possible.
Although recyclability is still less regulated than environmental footprint reporting, customer expectations continue to grow and legislation is evolving.
For Beaulieu, recyclability is about more than preparing for future regulation. Products that retain their value after use create new business opportunities. Materials that can be recovered become valuable resources instead of waste, benefiting both customers and the environment.
For solutions such as Rewind, this has already led to successful take-back programs, increasing recycling volumes year after year and reducing the environmental impact of at the end of the product’s life.
By integrating recyclability into product development today, Beaulieu is helping build solutions that create value not only during their first life, but long after that as well.
Learn more about our sustainability approach at beaulieu.com/sustainability.
NEWS
22/07/2026
Recyclability comes down to thinking upfront about the product and the system it lives in, so that at the end of their life, products turn into valuable raw material instead of waste.