The largest type of carpet fiber sold is the nylon pile yarn, with several breakthroughs over the years. The carpet fibers can be either natural, synthetic, or a blend with the latest development in nylon fibers made as more stain resistant, anti-static, negatively charged, and soil hiding. The main thing to remember with this new breakthrough is the cleaning solutions need to be anionic or non-ionic cleaning solutions as compared to the original cationic cleaner.

Natural fiber carpets is made of the carpet fiber wool, goat’s hair, coniferous, jute, linen, and sisal, and are all toxic-free. They are ideal for people with allergies or chemical sensitivities, while at the same time they improve indoor air quality. Wool and natural fibers are the smaller aspect of marketing but the oldest carpet fiber, with wool being the oldest and most expensive—yet the hardest to care for. A blended fiber carpet is also becoming popular, with blended wool yarns used in the modern carpets. Once the wool is blended with synthetic fibers such as nylon, the wool becomes more durable with its original characteristics of being dyed easily and it is always abundant. And with most fibers, a discount fiber carpet padding with different carpet fibers can be used.

Some of the newer carpet fibers are the plastic fibers in carpet which are spun from recycled pop bottles—20,000 plastic bottles make about 500 square yards of carpet. Of the five billion pounds of carpet installed in the United States annually, the mast majority was synthetic fibers. With about 70% of carpeting being used to replace old carpeting, about 4 billion pounds of carpeting every year is disposed of. With numbers like that in mind, the carpet industry has set about with newer methods to utilize this waste, such as carpet fiber waste recycling methods and using post consumer carpet fiber.

Some key issues that the carpet industry face are indoor air quality and overburdening landfill space. With this sort of efforts for the environmental situations, it is easy to see their care for industrial waste that has made them one of the largest industries for recycling. Some ways they have achieved this is excessive carpet pieces have been cut into smaller area rugs, such as mats or rugs. The packaging they use, such as polyethylene that is used to wrap the carpet yarn spools, is recycled into plastic pellets. These pellets are in turn sold to companies that make plastic wrap or plastic trash bags, or other products.