Mattress recycling

What should you do with your old mattress?

Old mattresses are one of the most common items disposed of illegally, being left at the side of roads or in abandoned areas. There are websites which display photos of mattresses which have been abandoned in derelict areas.

The value of mattresses

Most of us every 8-10 years need to dispose of our old mattresses. With such a strong emphasis in the world today on recycling it makes sense than we would want to recycle our mattress rather than send it to a landfill, however, that’s precisely where most of them end up even though they hold a high amount of recyclable material.

A lot of mattresses also contain wiring and springs which can be easily recycled, but there are not many schemes which allow for this, here are some that do:

St. Vincent de Paul Society – based in Oregon, USA, this society has recycled mattresses since 1994. They handle around five hundred mattresses per day in San Leandro, CA, where they have employed eight people at their mattress recycling facility.

The mattresses are collected through partnerships with landfill agencies and waste collection teams. Each mattress is stripped down into different sections of recyclable parts, these include: springs, polyurethane foam, sisal fiber, cotton fiber and wood.

FEAT Enterprises is based in Fife, Scotland and is a social firm – FEAT has been helping disabled or disadvantaged people with employment and opportunities. In the last three years they have received over £130,000 in grants for their mattress recycling project "SpringBack". They endured a slow start but now operate in four local authority areas with foam, springs and wood being recycled.

Landfills have a huge amount of space taken up by mattresses when there are opportunities available to have them recycled. There is an increase in the amount of people concerned about how we dispose of so much instead of recycling, which may cause a growth in the amount of schemes which support mattress recycling.