3.000 times the height of Utrecht's Dom tower. That's how many mattresses the Netherlands incinerates every year.
Since 2009, RetourMatras took the challenge of creating fully circular mattresses and, in 2019, partnered with Renewi to work towards a new mission: recycle every discarded mattress in Benelux.
Fresh of RetourMatras' opening of its fourth recycling plant in the Netherlands and its first plant in Belgium, Renewi and RetourMatras now save 1.5 million mattresses yearly from incineration in both countries.
Renewi's role in this collaboration is to collect the mattresses throughout the countries, whilst RetourMatras' innovative process recycles or reuses 90% of the mattresses' materials. This circular innovation is sustaining the Belgian and Dutch governments' effort to ban the incineration of discarded mattresses to instead promote more circular solutions.
We're extremely proud of this circular collaboration. To tell you more about it, Nanne Fioole [RetourMatras' director, ed.] joined us today to tell you more about it.
Nanne Fioole
Nice to have you with us, Nanne. Why did RetourMatras choose Renewi as a partner?
"It started at a time when Renewi was RetourMatras' biggest customer and wished to find alternatives from incinerating mattresses. We had the expertise to recycle old mattresses into secondary raw materials, whilst Renewi had a vast logistic network to collect the mattresses throughout the Netherlands. So we sat together and decided to start helping each other with our shared mission of advancing the circular economy."
What type of collaboration ensued with Renewi?
"Renewi is our customer and became our supplier to process the residual waste we still cannot reuse when recycling mattresses. Since 2019, Renewi became a circular partner after becoming a shareholder of our company. We now work together to collect mattresses as efficiently as possible and cooperate in circular projects with other companies, such as Aslon Refoam."
What was the biggest challenge you faced together during this partnership?
"Our biggest challenge is to advocate to keep mattresses out of the incinerators in Benelux, promoting recycling as a more sustainable alternative. Now that we have largely achieved our shared recycling goals, we target to reuse or recycle 100% of the materials from discarded mattresses by turning all the mattresses' foam into secondary raw materials for new mattresses."
When was Renewi’s expertise key to the success of this project?
"Since Renewi became a shareholder, its broad expertise in the field of waste processing and reuse was of great value to us. Also, we gained access to more financial resources by joining Renewi. These allowed RetourMatras to grow and expand its total recycling capacity. We have had two very successful years behind us, and we couldn't have done this without Renewi. Our partnerships aided us to more than doubled our processing capacity and open two new factories in a short time. We're looking forward to more innovations because there is still a lot we can do together."
What’s the future like for Renewi and Retourmatras?
"We keep on expanding in the field of sustainable mattress recycling by continuing to optimise the dismantling of discarded mattresses and improve our recycling capacity in Belgium. Soon, we target to recycle all discarded mattresses in Benelux and play our part in creating a more circular society."
Share your innovative ideaAre you or your organisation interested in circularity and have an innovative solution? Do you wish to implement it at a commercial scale? At Renewi, we’d love to hear from you! Any solution is welcome, and we would love to start with those with the highest and direct impact. Can we help to scale your solution? |
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