Austria’s pioneering mattress recycler achieves an 87% reduction in CO₂ emissions

BRANTNER Green Solutions, a leader in the circular economy sector, and foam manufacturer NEVEON established the joint venture LOOP-it to create a sustainable recycling solution for end-of-life mattresses. The initiative was launched to address the challenge of recycling used foam materials that had traditionally been sent for incineration.

One year on, LOOP-it has become Austria’s first dedicated mattress recycling company, operating a facility in Oberwölbling, Lower Austria, with the capacity to process up to 500 mattresses per working day, or around 110,000 mattresses annually. Through its recycling operations, the company recovers significant quantities of valuable secondary raw materials, including polyurethane foam, latex and metals.

Today, approximately 80% of the materials recovered from discarded mattresses are reused rather than incinerated. According to calculations carried out in partnership with ClimatePartner, recycling a mattress generates just 3.42 kg of CO₂, compared with 26.47 kg of CO₂ from incineration. This represents a reduction of 23.05 kg of CO₂ per mattress, or roughly 87% lower emissions.

LOOP-it is helping to close a major gap in Austria’s circular economy. More than one million mattresses are discarded across the country each year, with the majority still being incinerated despite containing recyclable materials. By recovering and reintroducing these resources into the production cycle, LOOP-it is transforming a traditionally linear waste stream into a sustainable and circular resource system.

Source: NEVEON