Leading interior solutions provider Armstrong Ceilings has almost quadrupled its recycling of materials from this year’s Farnborough International Airshow.

The manufacturer was first brought in to recycle its suspended ceilings at the 2008 airshow by the event’s largest independent chalet fitting contractor SDD Exhibitions, and managed to save a total of 2,600m² (or 10 tonnes) going to landfill.

This year, Armstrong has recycled almost 10,000m^² (or 38 tonnes) of its Dune Supreme and Cortega tiles as well as 1,000m2 of its Mezzanine board tiles. The Armstrong tiles were used in more than 20 corporate hospitality and business chalets used by such prestigious exhibitors as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. These chalets are utilised during the show week of July 19-25, taking five weeks to build and fit out and one week to dismantle.

The mineral tiles were installed for SDD by Hampshire-based ceilings and partitioning contractor RSD Systems. After dismantling, they were temporarily gathered in the show’s exhibition hall, then transported by Armstrong trucks back to the company’s plant in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. The Portsmouth branch of specialist supplier CPD Distribution helped load the pallets onto the trucks. Collections are free from any part of the UK for loads of 2,000m^².

At Gateshead, the used tiles are broken down into slurry and used as the raw material for new tiles in a pioneering End-Of-Life recycling scheme Armstrong has operated for more than six years. This has more recently been complemented with an Off-Cut Recycling scheme.

David Humphreys, project controller at SDD Exhibitions who specified the Armstrong tiles for the event and for the 2009 and 2010 Paris air shows, said: “We specified the Armstrong tiles for a variety of reasons including their aesthetics, acoustics and ability to resist the higher levels of humidity on site, an element that was supported by a lifetime guarantee.

“In addition, the 2008 recycling scheme was so successful we did not hesitate to specify Armstrong again as no other supplier’s scheme is as well established and efficient, and we knew Armstrong could handle the potential for a much larger uptake this year.”

Armstrong is likely to be called on again for the 2012 Farnborough International Airshow and before then, the 2011 Paris Air Show.