ALEXANDRIA, Va., — The Mattress Recycling Council (MRC) has awarded a research contract to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to explore a potential new application for chemically recycled urethane foam generated in the mattress recycling process.
According to MRC Research Consultant Mike Gallagher, UCLA will investigate “an alternative approach to conventional concrete that uses zeolites and chemically recycled urethane foam.” Zeolites are abundant, very strong, naturally occurring porous minerals which are used in a wide variety of products. Very little energy is used to process and purify zeolites. By contrast, the conventional concrete manufacturing process is extremely energy intensive. This research builds on a federal grant previously won by UCLA which demonstrated the promising potential of zeolite concretes as a very low carbon footprint building material.
MRC invests $1 million annually to fund research to improve the recyclability of discarded mattresses, improve efficiencies in the mattress recycling process, fund collection site infrastructure improvements and find new end markets for recycled mattress components. Visit MRC’s research page on our website to learn more.