that has been found to result in the recovery of backing material with exceptionally low rates of contamination this material can then be reused in new carpet backing or other products with the addition of little or no virgin material the reclamation stage of the invention set forth functionally above will now be considered in conjunction with fig2 which schematically illustrates the equipment that is used to perform the reclamation stage waste carpet is received at a conveyor 210 and fed into a chopper 212 the chopper may take the form of a 34 knife hog 34 a shredder or a grinder and should be able to process the raw carpet material into pieces small enough to be handled by an air driven conveyor system e g from approximately 1 2 inch to several inches in a preferred embodiment of the invention the chopper 212 comprises a knife hog the chopped carpet pieces are then fed via a blower 214 into a cyclone 216 the cyclone entrains the carpet pieces in a spiral airflow as discussed above this accomplishes at least three purposes it regulates the speed at which the carpet material is fed through the system dissipates excess air and it agitates.