How does a waste mattress come back to life?
How many years have your foam bed mattress used?
How would you dispose of used foam matresses?
Most foam mattress memoryes are thrown away after an average of ten years of use, which not only causes a waste of resources, but also generates a lot of waste. At the same time, the production of new flexible foam foam sponge mattresses consumes valuable raw materials, especially crude oil. Therefore, a circular economy solution for foam spring mattresses can both reduce waste and save fossil resources.
BASF has developed a chemical recycling process for used form mattresses and will start a pilot project at the Schwarzheide production site in Brandenburg, Germany. This process can be used to recycle old full mattress materials and use them for new gel foam mattress manufacturing.
BASF's innovative recycling process for used gel mattresses decomposes flexible polyurethane and extracts the polyol used initially
Shankara Keelapandal, head of BASF’s European isocyanate business management:
Our goal is to recycle used german mattress materials and ensure that their quality is comparable to unrecycled raw materials. "Through this process, BASF is exploring new fields, helping to promote the sustainable development of the foam and good night mattress industry, and to meet the increasing environmental protection needs of consumers. This is a major measure that helps to dispose of post-consumer waste Reintegrate into product life cycle."
BASF's recycling process can decompose flexible polyurethanes and extract the originally used polyols. Since then, BASF has been able to produce new foams with significantly reduced carbon footprint due to the use of fewer fossil resources.
Although old guangdong mattresses are easy to collect and sort, at the end of their life cycle, the current disposal methods are only incineration or landfill. Therefore, the old hard mattress recycling project is very attractive. "
The first batch of recycled materials for used healthcare mattresses will be delivered to project partners later this year to jointly develop pilot projects. Although the technology of the project is very complicated, all efforts are worthwhile in order to reduce waste and save resources.
With the implementation of the new recycling process, BASF is more committed to sustainable development and is constantly moving towards a circular economy. In order to achieve the "decoupling" of economic growth and limited resource consumption, BASF has accelerated the application of circular economy principles to daily operations. Keelapandal added: "That's why BASF developed a chemical recycling process for used healthy mattresses. We hope that through the chemical recycling of used healthy sleep mattresses, we can achieve closed-loop management of flexible polyurethane foam."