EA seeks supplier for monitoring POPs in ‘institutional mattresses’

The EA is looking for a buyer to carry out the project between 26 October 2023 to 16 February 2024 by undertaking phases of sampling and analysis. The contract is being valued at £49,000 and potential buyers can bid until 19 October 2023.

Notice

Institutional mattresses are those used in facilities such as hospitals, care homes, mental health institutions, prisons and police stations, they do not include mattresses from domestic settings.

The study will specifically focus on the foam mattresses with a waterproof plastic covering found in these facilities. The Agency said information for institutional mattresses suggests those used in prison and mental health institutions are considered at “very high risk of fire and therefore may have a higher flame retardancy”.

Those at nursing homes and certain hospital wards, are of medium-high risk of fire and those in a domestic setting are considered lower risk. Institutional mattresses tend to be made out of a polyurethane foam flame retardant inner with a waterproof flame-retardant PVC coated polyester textile or polyurethane outer covering, the Agency said.

If found to contain POPs or other harmful chemicals, the material could be banned from landfill.

POPs

The Agency is examining a range of material streams to assess whether they contain POPs, with fears that other forms of textiles and carpets could also be branded as POPs waste (see letsrecycle.com story).

A similar tender for construction waste was launched earlier this year (see letsrecycle.com story).

These fears arose from a Defra consultation ran between 2 March and 27 April 2023 and came on the back of recent additions to the UN’s Stockholm Convention on POPs which the UK, as party to the Convention, must implement at a national level.

A previous EA investigation also found large levels of POPs in seating textiles and foams which led to the legislation which manded that waste upholstered domestic seating must be sent for incineration rather than landfill and cannot be mixed with non-POPs waste (see letsrecycle.com story).

The correct treatment of waste upholstered domestic seating such as sofas, armchairs and beanbags include segregating the material, describing, and classifying it correctly and sending it for destruction in a municipal or hazardous waste incinerator or cement kiln.