BASF, Neveon partner on mattress recycling

Over 30 million mattresses are discarded every year in the European Union, most ending up being incinerated or disposed of in landfills. Aiming to establish a closed product loop for mattresses, BASF and foam specialist Neveon are working together to promote a circular system for mattresses, in which at the end of life these are recycled and the foam returned to the produt life cycle.

To that end, however, cooperation between all stages along the value chain is crucial, from product design through the recycling of these products into feedstocks for new products.

Collection is an important link in the chain. Old matresses must be collected and returned on a systematic basis if a viable look is to be established. With that in mind, Neveon is now launching Remattress, a mattress take-back pilot, initially in Berlin. The coming months will see the initiative broaden into various other states in the Federal Republic. The user-friendly concept is simple: Berlin citizens go to www.remattress.de citizens to schedule a pick-up date. The mattress is collected, dismantled professionally, and made available for reprocessing.

BASF is developing a wet chemical recycling process for used mattresses made of flexible polyurethane. Initial small-scale trials have been very promising. The original polyols can be recovered from the used mattress foams and used again to produce high-quality flexible foam blocks. The quality of these flexible foam blocks made from recycled polyurethane is equivalent to that of mattresses made from conventional virgin materials, said BASF.

As early as this year, the two companies plan to obtain the first pilot quantities of recycled mattress foams made from collected used mattresses. The next step will be to scale the recycling process in subsequent years.

“Together with Neveon, we want to build a partner network and close the loop step by step," said Sven Crone, responsible for the European business for isocyanates & precursors at BASF.

“The future bears the name circular economy,” added Neveon CEO Oliver Bruns

"We as an industry need to drive the transformation to a circular system where products at the end of their life cycle are not waste, but valuable raw material and feedstock for new products.”