Post-consumer Foam Recycling Project Shows Promising Results

As part of the Partnership for circular economy for discarded mattresses, initiated by the city of Copenhagen in November 2021, the company Bramming Plast-Industry A/S conducted a recycling test on postconsumer foam from discarded mattresses.

The test concerned four different input streams: i) post-industrial foam, ii) post-consumer mattress foam collected in an established collection scheme in the Netherlands, iii) post-consumer mattress foam collected in DK from businesses and the collection schemes for bulky waste in Zealand, and iv) 50/50 mixture of post-industrial foam and post-consumer mattress foam from the Netherlands.

The results show that post-consumer based bonded foam can be used as a good substitute/alternative for post-industrial bonded foam. There are no emission problems, no hygiene problems and mechanical properties are mostly at a level/in accordance or even better than post-industrial foam. As expected some low levels of hazardous substances can be detected, but all measurements are in accordance with current REACH and RoHS legislation, meaning no significant obstacle for outlets.

Please find the full report here.