Mattress Ticking: Creating circular products

Abstract

On a yearly bases approximately 1,5 million mattresses are discarded in the Netherlands. Matras Recycling Europe (MRE) is an Utrecht based company that specialises in disassembling mattresses. MRE is able to recycle 250.000 to 300.000 of the 1,5 million mattresses. Most of the pieces that are separated from these mattresses can be re-used in other applications. The outside layer of a mattress, known as ticking, has not found a useful application yet. In this thesis, the possibilities are researched for the application of mattress ticking. The main research question is therefore: How can recycled mattress ticking be treated to design useful applications? At the start of this thesis the common solution for the re-use of ticking waste is to shred the material and press it into sheets. The name for these sheets is TEPA. It can be used as insulation in renovated or new floors in buildings. However, the amount of ticking waste is greater than the amount of TEPA used. This is also a reason to find another application for ticking waste. For recycling purposes it would be desirable to be able to separate the different materials For the most part it is made of polyesters, cotton and other natural fibres. At the moment this is hard and too expensive to separate these materials. Several other processing techniques where analysed to find a useful one for ticking waste. An adjustment is made to the existing processing technique by pulverizing the waste material into smaller pieces to create a material that is more homogeneous than TEPA. After the waste material is pulverized, a sheet can be pressed and a product proposal can be made. Acoustic wall panels are designed called Acoustic Ticking. During the production process several shapes and surface finishes can be pressed into the sheets. There are however a few factors to take into account. The flammability of the untreated Acoustic Ticking, just like TEPA, is high. This can be reduced by treating them with a solution that is also used for curtains and furniture. The other factor to take into account are the dimensions of the fibres to not be hazardous for people. The dimensions of polyester and natural fibres however are large enough for the human body to safely dispose of.

The design of the Acoustic Ticking could be improved by looking into other hanging systems for the panels, see what other shapes can be manufactured and if it in some way can be used as a construction material.
The final result of this thesis is an acoustic panel that extends the life-cycle of ticking waste materials. This solution uses no virgin materials and fits the circular economy diagram made by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Also, the manufacturing of the acoustic panels has the possibility to process a large amount of ticking waste that would otherwise be incinerated.