In the News - Recycling Mattresses

When my Dad passed away last year, my sister and I had to decide what to do with all of his stuff, including his furniture. He had a nice solid wood bed frame which we kept, but what to do with the mattress and box spring? These were old... probably from the 1970s. They still had handles for Pete's sake.

I already knew that no thrift store in our city would take used mattresses, so that was out. They were too old and stained to try and sell on Kijiji. We didn't have a vehicle which could schlepp the mattresses to the dump. So we got a couple of "We get rid of your Trash" guys from Kijiji and they came, tied the mattress and box spring to the top of their vehicle and drove off with it. We paid them $40 to dispose of it at the landfill. Theoretically. I've since learned that these fly-by-night guys could just have driven down some side road and dumped the mattresses in the bush. It was a convenience for us to go with a couple of cheap guys... but I'm not sure it was the right thing to do. I've seen my share of mattresses by the side of the road sooo... clearly that is not a solution.


But is it really that big a deal? I mean... when you buy a mattress... you're buying it for 20-25 years, right? Nope... apparently the average mattress life-span is 8-10 years. The US throws away 18,000,000 mattresses/year. Canadians throw away 6,000,000 mattresses a year. And the numbers are only increasing. People today are buying new memory foam mattresses with gusto via Casper and other online retailers, mattresses that might not last more than a few years.

My partner and I bought a top-of-the-line memory foam mattress about 15 years ago. It was heaven for the first few months but then... the memory foam started to form a bad memory and it didn't bounce back like it had before. There were hollows that formed in the foam and the comfort disappeared. Worst purchase ever. We contacted the retailer but they said it was normal wear. Ugh. No 100 day guarantee there. We eventually got rid of it by gifting it to a friend who wanted a memory foam mattress.

Casper - mail order mattresses

Had we bought an online memory foam mattress though... we could have tried it for 100 days, decided that it wasn't for us, and then send it back to the retailer. While we could then try another online retailer with a 100 day guarantee. Rinse and repeat. Apparently this is a thing. With over 100 online mattress retailers, you could conceivably cycle through a new mattress every 100 days and never actually buy one. And your used & returned mattress? Are they resold? Hmm... likely not. Welcome to the World of Disposable Mattresses... each with a 100 day life span.

Which got me thinking... what happens to old mattresses that can't be re-gifted or sold? Where do they go, besides the side of the road? Do they get buried in the landfill? Apparently they do, for a fee of course. Gone are the days when you could just dump your old mattress at the landfill for free. Today, it costs $15/mattress/box spring to dump at our landfill. Which... errr... really makes me think our junk boys took our money ($40) and just dumped the mattresses in the bush instead of shelling out $30 at the landfill.

Some municipalities (e.g. Vancouver) actually banned mattress from landfills in 2011 (that's progressive!). I can now see why dumping by the side of the road might be preferable for some... just let the city/regional district/taxpayer fork over the cash to pick it up and dispose of it. It's not a small problem... so what are the other options? Can mattresses be recycled?

Mattress recycling in Calgary

Yes and no... mattresses are challenging to recycle AND their component parts do not generate a lot of income. Mattresses are basically fabric, padding, metal springs and wood. While the metal has some value... the padding (foam, etc) can be harder to handle. It can cost more to recycle a mattress than the sale of its component parts. That's why even mattress recyclers will charge money to handle our worn-out sleeping pads.

It's no wonder then that mattress recycling facilities aren't all that common. The citizens of the United States throw away 18,200,000 mattresses a year... but there are only 56 recycling facilities that can handle mattresses in the US. As for Canada, we apparently throw away 6,000,000 mattresses a year. How many recycling facilities are there? Not sure... let me look into that...

Well... that was fascinating! I learned quite a bit while researching this blog post. The good news is 95% of a mattress's components can be given a second life. Check out the video link below to see what happens to mattresses...

Common mattress components - steel, foam, cotton, wood

• polyurethane padding - shredded, pressed and used for carpet underlay
• cotton batting - cleaned and used for furniture stuffing
• felt padding - available for free from recycler - can be used as insulation or packing material
• wooden frame - available for free from recycler or used as biofuel
• metal springs - go to metal recycling

That's the good news... the bad news is that there aren't that many mattress recycling facilities out there. And... many municipalities either ban mattresses from landfill or charge fees for their disposal. Sooo... the bad news is that there are some less than ideal ways to deal with excess mattresses.

Sri Lanka - UK container with mattresses (the green plastic
is used by manufacturers and stores when they "recycle"
mattresses)

Mattresses are sometimes shipped off to the Third World where they become someone else's problem. In 2019, a batch of shipping containers from the UK were sent to Sri Lanka and found to be mislabeled as "metal recycling". The containers didn't have metal recyclables... they were stuffed to the gills with mattresses, plastics and hospital waste (think amputation parts).

There is also the "refurbished" mattress industry, which is legal in some areas... and illegal in others.

Refurbishers take whatever old mattresses they can find, recover them and then sell them for cheap in furniture stores, thrift stores and, sometimes, from the back of a van.

Tags from a new and a sanitized, refurbished mattress.

The mattresses are "supposed" to have been sanitized but this may not always be the case. Obviously, this can be very unhygienic and it's debatable if it is worth the cheaper price. Refurbished mattresses can be identified because they don't have any tags... so... buyer beware...

I've done a bit of digging and... we do have a few legitimate mattress recyclers in Western Canada:

• Hope, BC (go BC!!) - Mattress Recycling - they charge $20/box spring/mattress
• Vancouver BC - Canadian Mattress Recycling - $20/mattress/box spring (they also recycle furniture). These guys have a pretty cool story - watch this three minute video to learn what happens to all the mattress bits...
• Calgary, AB - Re-Matt - $20/mattress/box spring - Albert's first mattress recycling company - similar to the other two companies

And... our regional district is moving in the same direction. They started a pilot project last November and in two months, 710 mattresses were diverted from the landfill. Hoping that continues.


But all of this raises the question... it still costs money to bring an old mattress/box spring to a recycling facility. It makes me wonder why the government doesn't tack on an eco-recycling fee to the purchase price of a new mattress. You know, like with vehicle tires. We pay up the end-of-life recycle/disposal fee up front, so it doesn't become an issue to dispose of the tires sensibly. I remember the day when such was not the case and tires would end up out in the bush where they would slowly leach toxins into the soil and ground water. Those days are gone (or are they?)... maybe it's time to add mattresses to that list...

Inspiration
This blog post started with a CTV news article which made me curious...
CTV News - Calgary company recycles thousands of mattresses
Guardian - The Mattress Landfill Crisis