The Vita Group, a European flexible polyurethane foam solutions provider, and Dow have announced a new collaboration for the production of flexible polyurethane foams made with Renuva polyols – raw materials created from recycled mattress content - derived from Dow’s Renuva programme.
The Renuva mattress recycling programme is a circular economy initiative from Dow in which discarded mattress foam is turned back into raw material (polyol) through chemical recycling. The new raw material can then be used in flexible or rigid foam products to go into applications such as building insulation boards and even back into new mattresses.Every year, around 30 million mattresses are thrown away in Europe. This new initiative will help enable a more circular economy for polyurethanes by ensuring the applications they are used in can be recycled, and it can help the EU reach its goal of having 65% of municipal waste recycled by 2030.
The collaboration with Vita brings a closed loop for post-consumer mattresses within reach. As previously announced, Eco-mobilier will supply post-consumer PU mattress foam for chemical recycling to the first industrial scale production plant operated by Orrion Chemicals Orgaform in France. The result of this process will be new polyols, ready for use in foam solutions.
The Renuva mattress recycling programme aims to recycle up to 200,000 mattresses a year in France and help address the problem of waste landfilling and incineration. Initial production of Renuva polyols is anticipated in the first half of 2021. The Vita Group therefore expects to start using Renuva polyols at its ICOA production site at Crancey, France in early 2021.