Kept outof landfill
A walk-off mat is nitrile rubber and nylon. Nothing about it breaks down in a landfill, and a new one takes oil, gas and energy to make. Remanufacturing keeps the mat you already own on the floor. This page works out what that is worth, and shows every number it uses.
Every number, and where it comes from
You are welcome to check the arithmetic. The factors live in one file on this site, factors.json, and the calculator, the badge and this page all read it.
Pounds kept out of landfill
The weight of the mats you did not throw away. Rental walk-off mats weigh about 0.58 lb per square foot, measured on our own shop scale across the standard sizes. Manufacturers' published weights for 65-mil nitrile-backed mats agree within a few percent. This is the hard number. A nitrile and nylon mat does not decompose, so a mat in a landfill stays there.
Emissions of a new mat
A nitrile-backed mat is roughly 60% nitrile rubber by weight and 40% nylon face. Making nitrile rubber releases about 5.5 kg CO2e per kg and nylon 6 about 6.7 kg CO2e per kg, cradle to gate. Blended, that is 6.0 kg CO2e per kg of mat. Moulding energy and freight from the factory are left out, which understates the true figure.
Less what remanufacturing uses
A replaced border is new nitrile rubber, about 1.5 inches wide around the mat. We charge that rubber at the same 5.5 kg CO2e per kg, count borders as 86% of repairs (our own repair records, 60,911 of 70,690), and add 0.5 kg per mat for the pallet's freight both ways and the press. Net avoided is what is left.
Over time
Manufacturers rate a new rental mat at about five years. Replace on that cycle and a floor position buys three more mats over twenty years. Remanufacture instead and each visit buys another five to fifteen years on the same mat. The model counts the mats never made, less the visits it took. Change the years to suit your route.
Sources
- Mat weight: MatWorks shop scale, 0.58 lb per square foot across 3x5, 4x6, 3x10 and 4x8; corroborated by M+A Matting, Mat Sizes and Weights (52, 65 and 90 mil nitrile backing).
- Nitrile rubber, 5.52 t CO2e per tonne, cradle to gate at 30% acrylonitrile: Flannery and Mares, Greenhouse Gas Index for Products in 39 Industrial Sectors: Synthetic Rubber, Resources for the Future, 2022.
- Nylon 6 resin, 6.7 kg CO2e per kg: American Chemistry Council and Franklin Associates, Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle Inventory of Nine Plastic Resins, 2011, as published by Plastribution.
- Cross-check: US EPA Waste Reduction Model, carpet chapter, gives 3.83 t CO2e avoided per short ton of carpet not manufactured (4.2 kg per kg; lower because a third of broadloom carpet is limestone filler) and 0.04 t per short ton for landfilling it. WARM v13, Carpet.
- Driving equivalence, 0.244 kg CO2e per km: US EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, 3.93 x 10-4 t per mile, 2022 fleet.
- Border share of repairs, 86%: MatWorks invoice records 2003 to 2025, counted units only. Provenance on About.
A running total you can show
Repair customers can carry a MatWorks badge on their own site. We update it as work is invoiced. It shows pounds kept out of landfill, the estimated emissions avoided, and links back to this method so anyone can check it.
Paste where you want it, with the ID we give you.
<script src="https://matworks.ca/badge.js"
data-matworks="YOUR-ID" async></script>Add data-theme="light" for a white version. The badge loads one small
file from matworks.ca and sets no cookies.
Send one pallet and judge the work on your own route before you commit any volume.