Pass around a sample of bonded polyurethane carpet cushion or rebond for the class to examine. The opportunity to generate additional revenues while eliminating costly waste removal has caught the attention of many home furnishings manufacturers, foam fabricators, carpet installers, and other converters of flexible polyurethane foam. An easy product to recycle, flexible polyurethane foam scrap is now generating revenue for many end-users, while supplying needed raw materials for producers of bonded carpet cushion. Reduce, reuse, recycle. This is hardly a new concept, but not always an easy one to realize.
Many materials are difficult to recycle.
Some simply don't produce a valuable recycled material. Others are difficult to collect and transport. Polyurethane foam manufacturers first attacked the solid waste problem by using more efficient product formulations and manufacturing processes to minimize the amount of process scrap. Even so, up to 30 percent of all polyurethane foam can become scrap after cutting and shaping foam in product fabrication. Without recycling, this could be a costly disposal problem for manufacturers and an environmental problem.