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Reversing the flow: How Tarkett is using radical collaboration to rethink what flooring can do
Tarkett is redefining its role in the built environment. EMEA Commercial Flooring VP Thomas Leneveu explains how the French group is driving this transformation.
Rapid read:
- Make circularity contractual, not optional: Products like iQ Loop embed take-back obligations into procurement, shifting circularity from aspiration to shared responsibility and enabling reliable reverse supply chains.
- Treat cross-industry collaboration as infrastructure: Scaling circular systems requires structured partnerships across suppliers, customers, competitors, and regulators to close material loops and align incentives.
- Build ecosystem capability and transparency: Lifecycle data disclosure, specifier training, and circular design practices embed circularity across the value chain, turning a niche initiative into market norm.
For most of its 140-year history, Tarkett has succeeded by delivering high-performance flooring at scale.
Today, Tarkett is a global leader in flooring and sports surface solutions, with about 12,000 employees, 33 production sites, and customers in over 100 countries. Its products cover hospitals, schools, offices, homes, retail spaces and athletic facilities — places where durability, hygiene and design all matter.
But as the industry faces growing pressure to reduce waste, cut emissions and manage material scarcity, the company is making a fundamental shift. Tarkett is no longer just selling surfaces. It is building systems designed to keep materials in use and reduce the footprint of the spaces we live and work in.
That shift began more than 15 years ago. Long before circularity became a mainstream concern, Tarkett launched its ReStart take-back and recycling program and began pioneering closed-loop solutions in carpet, vinyl and linoleum. Circularity is now embedded in many parts of the business. But legacy is not enough.
âCircularity gives us a competitive edge,â says Thomas Leneveu, EMEA Vice President Commercial Business Unit. âBut weâre seeing a worrying trend. Many circular pioneers are starting to step back because they feel it simply doesnât pay off.â
For Tarkett, that is not just a market shift. It is a systemic risk. Circularity cannot succeed in isolation. It relies on a functioning ecosystem of customers, suppliers, regulators and infrastructure partners all moving in the same direction. Without that alignment, even the most advanced circular systems can stall.
Tarkett is moving in the opposite direction. It has the infrastructure, technology, and the experience. The next challenge is speed. In a world still structured around linear economics, how do you accelerate a circular transition?
The challenge: Rethinking flooring in a system built to tear it out
Tarkett has spent more than a decade building one of the flooring industryâs most advanced circular ecosystems. Through its ReStart programme, the company collects used flooring in 29 countries across five continents. It has partnered with players from the water, paper, and textile sectors to develop new sources of recycled materials. And it has developed technology to separate and reuse high-purity nylon from used carpet tiles.
But the challenge now is not invention. It is acceleration.
Cost is a major friction point. Circular materials are still more expensive than conventional ones. Reverse logistics are complex and require behavioural change.
Too often, it is still easier – and cheaper – for building owners to send used flooring to landfill or incineration than to return it.
âWe organize the collection,â says Leneveu, âbut sorting happens on the customer side.â
Then thereâs the time horizon. Flooring is typically replaced every 10 to 20 years. Procurement decisions in hospitals, schools, and public infrastructure are often short-term and cost-driven, making it difficult to embed circular lifecycle thinking into contracts or building plans. Business models such as flooring-as-a-service have so far struggled to gain traction, even if they offer more sustainable and efficient solutions over time.
Even awareness remains a barrier. âWe see a lot of talk about reducing waste and recycling, what I tend to think of as ârecycling in theory,ââ says Leneveu. Turning theory into practice requires end-users to become active participants in a circular system. Without their commitment, even the best-designed solutions fall short.
And critically, the broader ecosystem isnât yet fully aligned. Circular flooring requires coordination not only within the supply chain but far beyond it: from regulators who can incentivize low-carbon procurement to architects and designers who specify materials.
Thereâs also a deeper cultural challenge. âFor many in business, the idea of collaborating with other companies or industries does not sit entirely comfortably,â Leneveu states. âIn a world where business is dominated by combat-related metaphors and a culture of rivalry, it can feel odd to view other businesses as potential partners.â
But the only way to address broad systemic challenges is through radical cross-industry collaboration. That means closing material loops, sharing experience, and building systems that allow products and resources to circulate efficiently.
âThese behaviours are the foundation of a circular economy,â he explains. âThey improve profitability and resilience, meet climate goals, and reduce dependency on virgin resources.â Yet in a competitive landscape with limited short-term incentives, building that kind of alignment remains difficult.
The danger is not just delay, itâs regression. As some early adopters begin pulling back, discouraged by the slow pace of change and lack of financial reward, the momentum behind circularity risks stalling. For companies like Tarkett, staying the course will require not just resilience but a radical new approach to collaboration.
Tarkett is responding to this challenge not just with new products but by reshaping the relationships that make circularity work.
The solution: Building systems for shared responsibility
Tarkett is responding to this challenge not just with new products but by reshaping the relationships that make circularity work.
Take iQ Loop, a homogeneous vinyl flooring product made with at least 65 percent recycled post-consumer material. Technically, it matches, and in many cases exceeds, the performance of any other floor. Strategically, it is different. Customers can only access iQ Loop if they agree to return their flooring at end of life through the ReStart programme.
âThe idea behind iQ Loop is to have a product that really displays how far we can go with recycling,â Leneveu explains. âBut customers who want to buy iQ Loop must also make a commitment to join the loop. Once they commit, we help make sure the flooring is installed and managed in a way that it can be recovered.â
The goal is not just material recovery. It is behaviour change. iQ Loop reframes the customer relationship around shared responsibility. It rewards those who contribute to the loop and sets new expectations for what circular procurement can look like.
This same mindset underpins Tarkettâs long-standing circular work under its DESSO carpet brand. A partnership sparked at its in the Netherlands in 2013 led to chalk from local drinking water treatment being used in , replacing virgin chalk with recycled calcium carbonate. Collaboration with Aquafil enables regenerated nylon yarn. More recently, Tarkett substituted petroleum-based ingredients with pine rosin from the Scandinavian paper industry, cutting the carbon footprint of each tile by on average 20 percent.
These initiatives are not isolated, but part of a broader shift toward material partnerships across industries and beyond commercial transactions. âOne of the most significant opportunities of the circular economy is the sharing of waste materials between industries,â Leneveu notes. âIt reduces reliance on virgin materials and creates value from what is discarded.â
Transparency is part of this logic. Tarkettâs Environmental Product Declarations and material health statements provide customers, regulators, and even competitors with access to lifecycle data. In a landscape increasingly plagued by greenhushing, this kind of openness creates trust and pushes the whole sector forward.
Even direct competitors are part of the system. In the Nordics, Tarkett has accepted post-consumer carpet and vinyl flooring from other brands for years. âWeâve accepted competitor materials for years,â Leneveu says. âBecause circularity doesnât stop at the edge of your own product line,â he adds.
This thinking now extends to culture change. With the Inspire Circular Programme, Tarkett is convening architects, designers, and built environment professionals, and leaders from other manufacturing industries to explore how to embed circularity in practice. With expert input from design, economics, and academia, the program is as much about mindset shift as technical knowledge.
âCircularity is a collective effort,â says Leneveu. âWe couldnât have achieved the last decadeâs progress at Tarkett without the expertise, commitment and sheer determination of numerous partners across our industry and beyond.â
The company is calling for radical collaboration: partnerships that cut across silos, sectors, and even rivalries. That means replacing chance encounters with systematic material exchange. It means creating shared infrastructure for recycling. It means elevating others with the same values. And it means resisting the urge to treat sustainability as a zero-sum game.
Key takeaways
Tarkettâs approach to circularity is not just about better design and materials. It’s about shaping the ecosystem needed to make circular flooring viable at scale. For Thomas Leneveu and Tarkett teams, the path forward requires rethinking how products are sold, how value is shared, and how industries collaborate. These lessons apply to any business confronting long product lifecycles, fragmented stakeholders, and slow-moving market dynamics.
Use products to build commitment
iQ Loop turns circularity from a theory into a contract. Access to the product requires customers to return their used flooring, making take-back part of the value proposition and a signal of shared responsibility.
Treat radical collaboration as critical infrastructure
Circular systems cannot rely on good intentions or chance encounters. Tarkett is replacing informal collaboration with structured partnerships across industries from water utilities and yarn recyclers to paper mills and even competitors.
Turn transparency into a competitive advantage
Tarkettâs lifecycle data and material health disclosures are helping customers, regulators, and peers make better decisions. Transparency is not just about reporting. It is about fostering dialogue about the importance of circularity and the future carbon benefits that effective recycling can deliver.
Design for systems, not silos
Circularity works when companies stop drawing boundaries around their own supply chains. Tarkett invests in shared solutions because no company can close the loop alone.
Equip your ecosystem to lead
Through initiatives like the Inspire Circular Programme, Tarkett is helping architects, designers, and specifiers become advocates for circularity. Lasting change starts by building capability and commitment beyond your own walls.
For Thomas Leneveu and his team, the next phase of circularity is about shifting how the entire business and its ecosystem operate.
Whatâs next
For Thomas Leneveu and his team, the next phase of circularity is about shifting how the entire business and its ecosystem operate. Tarkett has spent over a decade building the systems, partnerships, and products that prove circularity is possible. The question now is how to turn it into a norm.
That starts with anchoring circularity in behavior, not just messaging. âIt is easy to talk about circularity,â says Leneveu. âWhat matters is turning that into real behavior change.â With iQ Loop, Tarkett is challenging customers to go beyond passive consumption and actively join the loop. The model rewards those who commit to returning material and contributes to building a reliable reverse supply chain. It signals a shift from circularity as product feature to circularity as a shared obligation.
The next frontier is turning collaboration into embedded infrastructure. One-off partnerships are not enough. Radical collaboration must become routine. Tarkett is expanding its network of partners from recyclers and installers to architects and designers through initiatives like the Inspire Circular Programme. By creating a common language and shared incentives, it aims to close knowledge gaps and align decision-makers across the built environment.
âWe need habitual and embedded information sharing across industries,â Leneveu explains. âThat means the right frameworks, the right incentives, and the right infrastructure.â
Inside the company, change is happening too. Sales teams are trained to lead circularity conversations. Design teams are building products for disassembly. Digital tools are tracking take-back rates and identifying leakage points in the system. Across functions, circular thinking is being embedded as strategic logic, not just environmental ambition.
This is not about waiting for the market to demand circular flooring. It is about leading the market to expect it. As Leneveu puts it, âRadical collaboration may not always be the easy route. But it is exciting, rewarding, and commercially compelling.â
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