Old Mattress Recycling
That old mattress of yours doesn’t have to end up in the landfill with the millions of others. There are a growing number of mattress recycling facilities across the country that will take you that old mattress and recycle it for you. Here is a great feature on Planet Green that goes through the process of how a mattress is recycled and what it gets recycled to:
The organization featured on the show is the DR3 Mattress Recycling Facility located in Lane County, Oregon which services over 100,000 mattresses a year. DR3 stands for diverting, reducing, reusing and recycling since it would like to prevent as many mattresses from ending up in as trash.
Make sure to utilize a facility like DR3 if one is available in your area. Also, check with your county or local municipalities to find out if your area recycles old mattresses. The Good Human has a great list of other facilities that do take recycled mattresses. If unsuccessful, try asking a family or friend to see if they could use an old mattress or even putting it on a classified site. Do try your best to prevent another mattress from overfilling our landfills.
I see more and more efforts to go green and this is great! Often times, people will simply toss their mattresses outside their front yard and it definitely does go to waste…This is a good program that will put the mattress to better use if not better proper disposal. Hopefully, more places will consider recycling mattresses so we may be more efficient with our resources and less wasteful.
My mom recycles old bedsprings in a couple of ways. Sometimes, she disassembles it and uses each individual spring to make a snowman, by painting it and attaching a head and other accoutrements. Sometimes, she leaves the springs together and puts the whole wire frame in her garden for vines to grow over. Of course, both methods require removing the fabric and any batting that may be inside.
I think I saw this on Dirty Jobs a few days ago. It is a pretty disgusting process. Unfortunately, the way people get rid of mattresses around here is to tie them to the top of the car and drive down the highway.
That is actually where I originally saw this same recycling facility. I couldn’t find a good video on it to show, but I found this one that was just as good from Planet Green.
Yeah, it’s pretty sad that there aren’t more recycling facilities, but some people would probably still toss them out as they do know.