Sagging Mattress Recycling

  • The city of Toronto has started collecting old mattresses at a central recycling center. (Photo by Julie Grant)

One of the bigger things we
throw away are old mattresses. Landfills
are stuffed full of them. Julie Grant
reports that new companies are springing
up to recycle the steel and cushioning
from old mattresses. They say the government
could help, but it’s lying down on the job:

Transcript

One of the bigger things we
throw away are old mattresses. Landfills
are stuffed full of them. Julie Grant
reports that new companies are springing
up to recycle the steel and cushioning
from old mattresses. They say the government
could help, but it’s lying down on the job:

(sound of a mattress factory)

Simon Zysman has been working with mattresses for more
than half-a-century. For the past 16, he’s been running a
business in Toronto that tears old mattresses apart so the
pieces can be reused.

“i’ve only dismantled with my own hands 3,000 used
mattresses and my enterprize in the 16 years has only
dismantled 40,000 mattresses, and therefore i know very
little. I’m just learning.”

Yeah, like Lance Armstrong is just learning to ride a bike.

Now, apparently dismantling mattresses is not a cushy job.

(sound of mattress deconstruction)

Workers pull mattresses from a big pile. I watch one as he
makes a long cut all around the edge, snips material where
it’s connected to the coils. And then pulls the entire face of
the cushioning away from the springs. It’s kind of like
filleting the mattress.

When he’s done, the cushioning goes on one pile. The steel
springs on another.

Zysman sells the different parts to companies in the U.S.
that rebuild mattresses. Other people in the business just
recycle the steel and sell the cushioning for things like
carpet-padding and oil filters.

Zysman used to toss and turn when he thought about the
huge numbers of mattresses out there, but his supply’s not
been steady.

When you buy a new mattress, a lot of times the company
that delivers it will pick up your old mattress. Most
companies just send them to the dump. Only a few pay
people like Zysman to have them dismantled.

Until recently those few have provided Zysman’s only
supply.

But the city of Toronto has started a pilot program to collect
old mattresses from residents at the curbside for companies
like Zysman’s.

“The city’s pioneering mattress recycling program has been
a great boost to us and a great help to us. That is a
wonderful development.”

(sound of a recycling center)

The mattresses the city picks up are stockpiled at a recycling
center.

Bryan Farley runs the city’s new program. He says Zysman
and other people like him are getting paid to keep
mattresses from stuffing the landfill.

“Landfill space in Ontario is a premium. It’s hard to find.
And there are laws and regulations that are more focused on
not putting materials into the landfill.”

Farley figures getting mattresses out of the waste stream will
help the city to meet its ambitious goal of reducing trash by
70%.

Mattresses take up a lot of space. They’re big and bulky and
don’t smash down all that well in a landfill.

South of the Canadian border, in Ohio, Chuck Brickman has
been piecing together a mattress recycling business.

He wishes the government here would help increase the
supply of used mattresses. Brickman can get some from
local hotels and furniture stores, but it’s not enough so far to
run a steady business.

“There’s two companies right now in New Jersey that are
sending 2 to 5 thousand mattresses a month by rail from
New Jersey to a landfill in Michigan.”

Why? It’s cheap.

A few cities and states have special landfill fees for bulky
items like mattresses, but most don’t. So, it’s usually
cheaper just to dump them.

Brickman wants local or state governments to create more
‘incentives’ for the mattresses to be recycled. In other
words, higher fees to dump mattresses.

“It’s easier and more economically feasible for them to throw
them in a couple rail cars and send them a couple states
over because there are no established tipping fees in some
of the Midwestern states like Ohio and Michigan.”

Mattress recyclers say government officials can raise those
fees on dumping mattresses. That would make the mattress
recycling business less of a dream, and more of a reality.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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