End of Life of mattresses and furniture

摘要

The European Union's waste legislation has been deeply amended in 2018 in view of strongly increasing re-use,preparation for re-use and recycling of solid municipal waste between now and 2035.The new legislation will overtime require a significant shift in the way end-of-life mattresses and furniture are dealt with.Landfilling will be nearly phased out and incineration will be strongly discouraged.As these are the main ways of treatment of end-of-life mattresses and furniture today collection,dismantling and recycling of components mattresses and furniture are made of will have to increase drastically.Considering that mattresses and furniture are the two main markets for flexible polyurethane foam produced in the EU,the new EU waste legislation will require the development of new industrial-scale solutions for increased recycling of flexible poly-urethane foam,as currently available mechanical recycling processes would not be able to absorb the volume of end-of-life flexible PU foam diverted from landfill or incineration.A number of research consortia have been created in Europe,often with support of public funding,to seek to develop such recycling technologies for flexible polyurethane (PU) foam.While research is ongoing,it is the view of the European flexible PU foam industry that-in order to succeed in diverting from landfill the significant volumes of end-of-life PU foam considered-a variety of technologies will be required in the future,including waste-to-energy for the fraction of material that cannot be recycled otherwise.