The author paid a renewable recycling company to recycle and recycle his large mattress in New York City.
Greg Yacusi
I spent $95 to recycle a mattress.
It may sound strange, even silly, to spend so much money on a common household item.
But the economics of mattress recycling illustrate why becoming an environmentally friendly consumer in the U.S. is difficult and expensive
American throw away According to the Mattress Recycling Council, approximately 15 million to 20 million mattresses are produced each year. The average is about 50,000 per day.
Experts say most end up in landfills.
Mattresses are “one of the hardest things to recycle,” said Alicia Massey, an expert on sustainability and circular economy at Arizona State University.
“It’s a huge waste stream,” she said.
‘It could exist for hundreds of years’
Mattress in a junkyard.
Robert Brooker | Corbis | Getty Images
My mattress is a large mattress that has been passed down from my family, probably close to twenty years old, and in desperate need of replacement. The average service life of a mattress from manufacturing to consumer disposal is about 14 years. according to to MRC.
But what to do?
I live in Brooklyn where residents can handle mattresses free As part of daily garbage collection.
As someone who is meticulous about reducing waste in my daily life—avoiding single-use plastics, composting food scraps—the thought of my plastic waste ending up in a landfill pains me.
“If you throw a mattress in a landfill, it could sit there for hundreds of years,” said Meg Romero, director of recycling and waste control in Charles County, Maryland.
I thought, sure, I could find it a new home.
Wrong.
After two weeks of failed messages to local homeless shelters, organizations like the Salvation Army and Goodwill, and community forums, buy nothing and free bike networkI’ve lost patience with the freebie options.
Individuals who donate mattresses to certain groups You may be able to apply for a tax deduction Its fair market value on its federal tax return. Taxpayers need to itemize their deductions to benefit.
Have I neglected to contact some interested parties? perhaps. Might others have different results? Yes. But my personal cost-benefit analysis suggests it’s time to move away from donating.
I researched some recycling options and chose recycling companyheadquartered in East Rockaway, New York. Experts say few other U.S. companies are doing this type of work. one Table of contents Only 55 are listed in the list compiled by the MRC.
How to recycle mattresses
On March 10, 2022, mattresses were picked up and placed into trucks for delivery to a recycling facility at the Prima Deshecha landfill in San Juan Capistrano, California.
Mark Reitmeier/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
More than 75% of mattresses recyclableaccording to MRC. Some companies’ forecasts are closer to 90%.
Recyclers strip materials such as wood, steel, various foams and fibers and sell them into the secondary market.
Then the material is Repurpose: Shredded foam and fiber are used as carpet underlayment, animal beds, or insulation; wood is used as mulch and fuel; for example, springs are scrap steel.
“If you can recycle, those materials get a new life and can be used for other things,” said Romero of Charles County. Start mattress recycling program Available to residents August 1st.
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This reuse has other environmental benefits. For example, experts say manufacturing has less need to extract or purchase new materials, reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as water and energy use.
Unusually, services in Charles County are essentially free to residents. They can bring two items per day — such as mattresses and box springs — to the Charles County landfill for free recycling. Additional items are available for $10 each.
Romero said residents recycled more than 900 mattresses in September, double the official estimate. The county contracts with a Baltimore-based company to Decorative solutionsto manage the process.
Charles County’s motivations aren’t purely environmental, though.
Romero said the mattresses are bulky and take up valuable space in county landfills.
“A landfill is a finite space,” said Landfill President Peter Conway. Colorado Spring Returnsa recycler located in Commerce City. “They want to put something that breaks down easily, that compacts easily.”
“Mattresses are the antithesis of that,” Conway says. He expects to divert 8 million pounds of waste from Colorado landfills this year.
Why mattress recycling is expensive
Shred old mattress material.
Guillaume Sauvant | AFP | Getty Images
The $95 fee I ultimately paid to the recycling company was “pretty standard” among mattress recyclers, Conway said.
The cost included picking up the mattress from my apartment in Brooklyn and shipping it to the company’s warehouse in Oceanside, New York. (I could have Save $55 I put the mattress down myself, but I don’t have a car.
Spring Back Colorado also charges a $40 fee for each mattress and box spring delivered by consumers. If consumers request door-to-door pickup, there will be an additional fee of $60 or more depending on the distance traveled.
Romero of Charles County said mattresses are more difficult to recycle than other items such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard.
“The way they are made is completely different,” Romero said. “There is no unified structure and many different types of materials are used to make a mattress.”
The process is more time-consuming and labor-intensive, she said. Often, workers have to break them down by hand.
For example, cotton residue must be removed from steel mattress springs before it can be shredded or packaged for sale to the scrap market, according to Submit to the Mattress Recycling Council. The company said the staples also need to be removed from the wooden frame before it can be brought to market. Each coil in a pocketed coil mattress is individually wrapped in fabric and must be separated, Romero said.
“Profits are slim”
Additionally, Reed Liveset, a research scholar and resident fellow in industrial ecology at the Yale School of the Environment, wrote in an email that mattress materials would only generate “modest revenue” when sold.
These revenues often depend on fluctuations in commodity prices.
“We don’t set a price for a ton of foam or steel,” Conway said. “One day we might get 18 cents a pound, but the next week we might get 10 cents.”
If you throw a mattress into a landfill, it could stay there for hundreds of years.
And Romero
Director of Recycling and Waste Control, Charles County, Maryland
There must also be a market for these goods – sometimes these markets are not nearby, increasing transportation costs.
Spring Back, Colorado, for example, used to send all foam and ticks to recycling centers in California, Conway said. The company’s shipping costs are approximately $2,000 per truckload.
About a year ago, the California partner stopped accepting shipments: Demand for the materials had dried up, Conway said. He said he called companies as far away as Mexico, Canada, India and Egypt to find alternative placements, but ultimately found a new partner in Texas.
“We operate on razor-thin margins,” Conway said.
Spring Back Colorado generates additional revenue through mattress pickup and delivery and partnerships with businesses and municipalities, he said.
“Someone has to pay,” ASU’s Massey said. “It usually falls on the consumer.”
Consumers pay to subsidize recycling efforts
Cosam Pictures | Electronic+ | Getty Images
Some states and cities are making it more cost-effective for consumers to recycle mattresses.
Charles County, Maryland, for example, is funding its fledgling mattress program largely with taxpayer dollars. Romero said about $150 in annual residential taxes are allocated to the county’s Department of Environmental Resources for services such as curbside recycling, yard waste disposal, oil and antifreeze and now mattress recycling.
Three states, California, Connecticut and Rhode Island, have enacted mattress recycling laws since 2013.
These laws require the mattress industry to develop and administer a national program for the free collection and recycling of discarded mattresses.
However, the initiative is funded by consumers.
Someone has to pay. It usually falls to the consumer.
Alicia Marseille
Sustainability and circular economy expert at Arizona State University
Amanda Wall, a spokesperson for the Mattress Recycling Council, said individuals and institutions such as hotels and dormitories in these states pay a fee each time they purchase a mattress: $10.50 in California and $11.75 in Connecticut U.S. dollars, $20.50 in Rhode Island and $22.50 in Oregon. The MRC is a nonprofit organization created by the International Sleep Products Association, the mattress industry trade group, to establish and run these national programs.
Retailers pass these fees on to the MRC, which funds consumer recycling efforts. Wall said the fees will ultimately be used to subsidize free mattress drop-off and recycling services at any MRC-funded collection site in participating states. (Recyclers can still charge mattress recycling fees, she said.)
Wall said the mattress industry has pushed for similar legislation in New York, Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia this year and plans to continue working with those state legislatures in 2025.
The law is “extended producer responsibility“Countries have adopted broader policies that force companies to take some end-of-life responsibility for their products,” Marseille said.
Some question whether consumers now bear too much of the burden.
“For the most part, companies are not making products that are easier to recycle,” Conway said. “Consumers have a responsibility to figure out how to responsibly dispose of their belongings in a conscious way.”
He believes consumers need to make recycling easier and more affordable to promote this behaviour.
Conway added: “At the end of the day, if you have two options, one is toss it in a hole or the other is to recycle it, 95 per cent of people will choose the cheaper option.”
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