Blue Ridge Commercial Carpet

Ellijay, Ga.-based Blue Ridge Commercial Carpet offers more than 70 different modular and broadloom carpet products for high-traffic applications like offices and schools. Most products are available with the company's EnviroFlex recycled-content backing system, which meets the requirements of the Carpet and Rug Institute's Green Label Plus certification program, and many can be reclaimed and recycled by the company after their useful life.

Kevin Brooks, senior project manager with Sacramento-based Harbison-Mahony-Higgins Builders, a subsidiary of Swinerton Inc., San Francisco, specified Blue Ridge Nature Series broadloom carpet in 2088 Sahara color with a P218 Pebble pattern for Swinerton's LEED-EB Gold-rated corporate headquarters in San Francisco, which was completed in 2002. Approximately 500 sf of the carpet was installed in the building's third-floor bid room, which doubles as an overflow conference area for the company.

Why Kevin Brooks specified Blue Ridge carpet for the Swinerton hQ:

“At the time, our primary focus was on closed-loop recyclability. The product contains the Savant fiber, which is 100% recyclable back into actual carpet fiber. In addition, the product contains a fairly high recycled content.”

“It meets the Carpet and Rug Institute's Green Label VOC requirements, which was the minimum threshold we set for the project. One of our major focuses was indoor air quality.”

“We needed something that can take a beating. The bid room gets a constant flow of traffic. It also serves as an overflow conference room because it's one of the bigger assembly rooms on the third floor. So far, it's survived well.”

“Installation wasn't any different than with traditional carpet, so we did not get any pushback from the installers. That's a big factor with a lot of these green products that move from state of the art to off the shelf.”