Last month, Dow Polyurethanes, a Dow division, announced a pilot programme to use the ChemChain blockchain to help with mattress foam recycling. Recyclers require accurate information on the chemical composition of the products they process.

As a result of the use of blockchain to exchange data, it is now possible to determine the composition of a mattress at any point of its life cycle.

The trial is part of Dow’s RENUVA brand’s mattress recycling scheme.

Jihane Ball, Dow’s director of global product protection and compliance, wondered, “What if we could ensure accountability in a circular product without violating confidentiality?” “Our work on circular solutions with recyclers and customers has led us to this critical issue.”

To allow circularity at the end of product life, it is important to ensure that the correct compositional information can be exchanged at every step in the value chain.”

ChemChain was developed by the same people who built Chemycal, a regulatory framework. It runs on the Hyperledger Fabric enterprise blockchain.

It recently announced the start of a new pilot project with Solvay, a Belgian chemical company.


Blockchain is constantly being used in the circular economy and for recycling.

Mitsui Chemicals and IBM Japan announced earlier this week that they would use blockchain to recycle plastics.

BASF’s reciChain and Circularise’s collaboration with German plastics companies DOMO and Covestro and Porsche and Marubeni are two other companies investigating the technology.