INNOVATIONS | POLYURETHANES
A mountain of mattresses to climb
The word Everest crops up quite a lot when discussing mattresses. Not only because it is a famous brand name, but also because it is used to give an idea of just how huge the problem of mattress waste disposal is.
If
mattresspodcost.com is to be believed, stacked up, the number of mattresses discarded each day in the USA would surpass Mount Everest by an additional four miles (6.5km) into the sky. In Europe, according to Dow
company estimates that close to half of end-of-life (EOL) polyurethane (PUR) is landfilled, while 33% is incinerated. These solid waste streams end up in the municipal waste stream representing on average 2.75% in weight of the total municipal waste fraction, but 25% in volume. Mechanical recycling of mattresses goes on
Below: Used mattresses: a plentiful source for PU recycling
around the world, but its spread is quite patchy. It is quite well established in parts of mainland Europe. For example, Recyc-Matelas Europe has several facilities in France and Belgium that recycle and recover up to 90% of mattress components. All the sorted materials (wool, cotton, felt, PU foam, latex and mixed textiles) are pressed into bales by specific equipment and are then sent for recycling, reaching an average recovery rate of 90%. Springs are reprocessed too. Recyc-Matelas Europe says its objective is to recycle 2.4m mattresses a year across numerous plants, amounting to over 55,000 tonnes of material. It is a joint venture with Recyc- Matelas (Recyc-Mattress) in Pont-Claire, Québec, which began recycling mattresses in Canada in 2007, recycling around 400,000 mattresses a year. In Belgium, Valumat, a management body for Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR), estab- lished and financed by the sector, has the mission of collecting and reprocessing all discarded mattresses. It cooperates with all stakeholders (manufacturers and importers, collectors, proces- sors, governments, local authorities, etc). MattCan-
Polyurethanes, if all the mattresses thrown away in a year were stacked up, the pile would be 678 times the height of the mountain, assuming they were all 20 cm thick. Mount Everest is 8,849 m high.
ada in Montreal opened its first recycling plant in 2004. It has so far recycled something like 650,000 mattresses. In the USA, the Mattress Recycling Council (MRC) is a non-profit organisation, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, formed by the mattress industry to operate recycling programs in those states that have enacted mattress recycling laws. The program is currently running in California, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. MRC Managing Director Mike O’Donnell says last year it recycled over 1.6m mattresses. Pointing to the success of its programs, O’Donnell notes that in California, more than 83% of mattresses discarded in 2019 were diverted from landfills, up three percentage points from the previous year.
“Demand for post-consumer scrap foam is
strong in the US and it is currently all mechanically recycled into carpet underlay,” he says. “Having said that, we are closely following the polyurethane foam chemical recycling activities by Dow and other companies in the EU.” According to a report issued by the PFA, the
Polyurethane Foam Association in Loudon, Tennessee, USA, in March 2020, “the flexible polyurethane foam industry has one of the most successful recycling records in the world. In the US, virtually all manufacturing scrap is collected and recycled. And according to the Carpet Cushion Council, approximately 600 to 700m pounds [272,000-317,000 tonnes] of scrap foam are recycled each year from post-industrial sources.” The PFA does point out that flame retardants in foams historically used in furniture complicate the mechanical recycling picture; some of these FRs have since been banned in many countries. “By blending recycled foam containing FRs with other foam scrap, concentrations of FRs are significantly diminished, and the recycled form can be used productively, rather than being discarded,” it says. PFA Executive Director Russ Batson says chemical recycling and also energy recovery technologies have been discussed in several papers presented at recent PFA Technical Sessions, “most recently an update from CHZ Technologies
28 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | January/February 2021
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
IMAGE: PFA
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