Dow Polyurethanes (Horgen / Switzerland; www.dowpolyurethanes.com) and partner Orrion Chemicals Orgaform (Semoy / France; www.oc-orgaform.com) plan to set up an industrial-scale facility in France to recycle end-of-life PU foam. The project is part of Dow Polyurethanes’ “Renuva” programme that takes back discarded mattress foam and transforms it back into polyol feedstock via a chemical recycling process. The new raw material can then be used in flexible or rigid foam products for applications including building insulation boards and mattresses. The plant at Orrion Chemicals Orgaform’s site in Semoy is expected to be installed during the second half of 2020 with the first “Renuva” polyols to be delivered in the first half of 2021.

Dow said about 30m mattresses are discarded every year in Europe and if these were all stacked up, the pile would be 678 times higher than Mount Everest. “Through ‘Renuva’ our ambition is to address some of the circular economy goals set out in the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ and in national waste management strategies of countries like France,” said Marcel Moeller, global marketing and sustainability director at Dow Polyurethanes.

The PU producer said that the partnership with Orrion builds on an existing collaboration with H&S Anlagentechnik (Sulingen / Germany; www.hs-anlagentechnik.de) announced in 2017 to develop the market for recycled polyols made from end-of-life mattresses (see Plasteurope.com of 13.11.2017).