Most mattresses thrown away end up burned or buried, even though the materials inside them could be reused. Chico van Hamert of RetourMat has spent over a decade changing that, from developing dismantling technology from scratch to pioneering a way to turn old foam into recycled polyol used in new IKEA mattresses. He talks about what’s actually inside a mattress (including money and jewelry), why he says recycling one mattress saves roughly the same CO2 as a flight from Amsterdam to Paris, and what needs to change in product design before the industry can really close the loop.

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