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Mattress recycling wakes up
As recyclers work to improve the efficiency with which they disassemble old mattresses and pass the components along to secondary markets, researchers are working to develop new and improved technologies for turning polyurethane mattress foam into new products using chemistry. The challenging thing about polyurethanes, is that they’re thermosets. Thermosets are highly cross-linked polymers that can’t be melted and remolded like polyethylene or the other thermoplastics that people are used to tossing in their recycling bins. To do almost anything other than chop it up and glue the bits together into padding, recyclers must alter polyurethane foam on a chemical level.
Mike O’Donnell, the Mattress Recycling Council’s chief operating officer, says the MRC program structure was inspired by paint recycling programs in the US as well as Ecomaison, an industry-funded organization formed to comply with furniture-recycling regulations in France.