Ok, YOU need a new mattress, but have you stopped to think if the WORLD needs a new mattress?
The first thing I learned when I started making mattresses was they are very large items containing lots of bulky materials. Nowadays, it is getting harder to give away old mattresses as most people prefer new over used when it comes to their bedding. So how do you handle getting rid of your old mattress? According to the Mattress Recycling Council,
50,000 mattresses end up in US landfills EVERY DAY
Do you really want to have your mattress be number 50,001?
Luckily, I do not have a mattress I need to give away and if we ever need to dispose of our mattresses all I have to do is use it as mulch in my organic vegetable garden or use it as beautiful landscape borders or around trees, areas I do not want weeds to grow. The tubes can be mixed right into my compost pile and they will break down quite quickly.
So this brings me back to how to recycle a mattress. It is hard to find a location that provides this service ( I have been calling around all morning with a hypothetical mattress to recycle for the purpose of this blog post - no luck as of yet ) and most likely none that will do it for free.
Byebyemattress.com 's mattress recycling center locator tool as there are only 3 participating states Connecticut, California and Rhode Island and with our new political environment, who knows when the next state will be added.
Earth911.com led me to just one possible lead turned dead end: a transfer station that did not recycle anything so I am glad I called ahead before tying my hypothetical mattress on top of my car and driving across the river :)
So basically I came up with only two solutions for my hypothetical mattress:
1) I could move to France and become a mattress artist, leaving delicious art on the street as temporary art installations
2) Wearing a protective mask, disassemble the mattress and recycle the parts on their own or find another use for the parts without chemicals.
If you have had luck recycling a mattress outside of California, Connecticut or Rhode Island please drop us an email and we will list your state and the resource here on this blog post for others to find!