Leverkusen, Germany – Covestro’s Evocycle CQ Mattress, the company’s first chemical recycling initiative, is a tangible result of the four-year EU Puresmart project. It takes end-of-life mattress foam and converts it back into a polyol and a diisocyanate precursor.
These components can then be used to make new mattress foam, alongside fellow Puresmart partner, the Belgian foam specialist Recticel. It is the first time that flexible foam samples have been made from fully recycled polyols and TDI.
Although the project is still at the concept stage, the Leverkusen pilot plant for the chemical recycling process has been operational since 2021. If trials continue to be successful, the company intends to build a larger recycling plant to validate the technology further.
Covestro is also collaborating with companies such as Interzero and Ecomaison to source the used mattress foam required for the process.
“Our goal is to turn waste into valuable raw materials and to anchor the principle of the circular economy in our company and along the value chain with our partners to achieve this,” said Christine Mendoza-Frohn, Covestro’s head of performance materials sales for EMEA and LATAM. “We call this ongoing Evolution of Recycling: Evocycle CQ.”
