The U.S. Air Force, which operates one of the largest lodging operations in the world, began using carpet made with soy-based backing in 2009. Designated under the federal BioPreferredSM program, biobased carpets are now used throughout Air Force lodging facilities. The Air Force has lodging operations at 93 bases worldwide with more than 31,000 bed spaces. By 2010, the Air Force had installed the soy-backed carpet in about ten percent (or 3,000) of those rooms. The carpet in these facilities is upgraded every six years, and every time that happens, the plan is to install soy-backed carpet.
The soy-backing product, manufactured by Universal Textile Technologies (UTT), replaces more than 90 percent of the petroleum-based polymers in its polyurethane formula with biobased polymers derived from domestically grown soybeans.