Life Cycle Assessment of 'Mattresses – Reuse and Recycle Systems, a Pilot to Scale'

Approximately 650.000 bed mattresses are discarded every year in Denmark, generating between 15-16.000 tons of waste. Most of this waste ends up in waste incinerators across the country (Hauge, et al., 2024), but incineration is known to be generally less efficient compared to recycling and reuse of the products. With Danish municipalities striving to enhance recycling efforts and mattress producers showing increased interest in utilizing secondary materials, the limited options for collecting and recycling mattresses present a significant challenge to achieving these goals. The results in this LCA report are intended to be used by the partners in the research project (Odsherred Municipality, ARGO, ARC, The Capital Region of Denmark, Vejle Municipality, Vestforbraending, the City of Copenhagen, Danfoam/Tempur-Sealy, and Bramming Plast Industri) to aid their decision-making regarding possible options for future treatment of discarded mattresses. The results can also inform policy level of the potential in resource optimizing this part of the bulky waste fraction.
The LCA performed in the project was a consequential analysis and the functional Unit was defined as: Collection and waste management of 1 ton of discarded mattresses in Denmark 2024-2034. The LCA was conducted to compare the potential environmental impacts of four different waste-handling scenarios for discarded mattresses to gain data for resource optimization of the discarded mattresses and identify the least environmentally harmful waste-handling. Overall, the results show that the recycling scenarios are better than the scenarios involving incineration, however, it should be noted that there are some large uncertainties.

Further recommendations can be made based on this LCA study:
•Results are highly dependent on the recycling pathway, i.e., whether the foam is recycled into polyol or bonded foam
•Uncertainties pertain especially to the lack of primary data and market response
•Investigation of the market response to increased amounts of post-consumer PUR foam is needed
•Other uses for bonded foam, especially post-consumer PUR foam, should be investigated
•The study should be updated when more data for the glycolysis process becomes available, especially for large scale process testing as LCI data might change
•The efficiencies might change as a wider variety of mattress types and states of mattresses - i.e., to which degree they are clean and dry or contain recycled materials - might be included in the recycling system
•Updating the study if the location of the disassembly facility changes.