Mattress Recycling, a good Alternative to Mattress Disposal

Use Mattress Recycling and Save Sending Stuff to Landfill Needlessly

Don't just dispose of Mattresses today because you can recycle them with only a little extra effort. Recycling mattresses will also help the evevironment at the same time. Most people sleep on an insprung mattresses that contains hundreds of steel springs that are a valuable resource. Not only that the typical mattress also contains cotton materials, wadding and other materials that can be reused, recycled and repurposed. Oh and yes, Recycling Mattresses also creates jobs for people so you will be helping build the community rather than choking up the landfill site (or tip). The recycling of mattresses has grown in popularity in recent years. So now it is possible to get mattresses recycled in most state capitals and larger metropolitan areas. A number of the recycling centre operate across Australia in New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria and Western Australia.  Across these centres more than 100 staff are employed, many of them in social enterprises that assist people that have experienced long term unemployment, identify as indigenous or have a disability.

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What happens to Mattresses when Recycled?

So now when your mattress grows old, tired and looses its bounce go can give it a new life by sending it to be recycled (rather than buried).  Upto 75% of the materials in the mattresses are currently recycled.  The mattresses are taken apart and seperate into  the different materials:

• Steel
• Textiles
• Foam
• Husk matting
• Timber

The steel springs into new steel products such as roof sheeting.  The textile materials are used to create accoustic panelling products. The foam from the mattresses is often recycled and is used in the production of carpet underlay. Timber and husk matting materials are recycled into products such as kindling, weed matting, mulch and animal bedding.

What is the biggest Saving when recycling Mattresses?

The biggest saving when recycling mattresses is invisible.  I speak of the space that is saved in the land-fill sites from removing the mattresses from the waste streams. As the table below shows the volume of mattresses is not insignificant, varying between a half and a cubic meter..

It is estimated that somewhere in the region of 700,000 mattresses are replaced each year. So that would be about 1/2 million cubic meters of land-fill that would be filled up with mattresses (about the same volume as 20 Olympic swimming pools) each and every year.   

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