The writer paid an organization, Renewable Recycling, to select up and recycle his queen-size mattress in New York Metropolis.
Greg Iacurci
I paid $95 to recycle a mattress.
It might sound odd, foolish even, to pay a lot to get rid of a run-of-the-mill family merchandise.
However the economics of mattress recycling illustrate why it may be tough — and dear — to be an eco-friendly shopper within the U.S.
People discard about 15 million to twenty million mattresses every year, based on the Mattress Recycling Council. That is a mean of about 50,000 per day.
Most find yourself in a landfill, consultants mentioned.
Mattresses are “one of many hardest issues to recycle,” mentioned Alicia Marseille, a sustainability and round financial system professional at Arizona State College.
“It is a large waste stream,” she mentioned.
‘It will in all probability be there for a whole bunch of years’
Mattresses at a rubbish dump.
Robert Brook | Corbis | Getty Photographs
My mattress — a queen-sized hand-me-down from household and doubtless near 20 years previous — was in determined want of substitute. The typical mattress has a lifespan of about 14 years, from manufacture to shopper disposal, based on MRC.
However what to do with it?
I dwell in Brooklyn, the place residents can get rid of a mattress totally free as a part of routine trash pickup.
As somebody who meticulously tries to chop waste in on a regular basis life — avoiding single-use plastics, composting meals scraps — it was painful to consider mine losing away in a landfill.
“For those who put your mattress in a landfill, it will in all probability be there for a whole bunch of years, simply sitting there,” mentioned Meg Romero, the recycling and litter management superintendent for Charles County, Maryland.
Certainly, I can discover a new residence for it as a substitute, I assumed.
Fallacious.
After two weeks of unsuccessful dispatches to native homeless shelters, organizations like The Salvation Military and Goodwill, and neighborhood boards like Purchase Nothing and The Freecycle Community, I would exhausted my endurance for a free-giveaway choice.
People who donate a mattress to sure teams could possibly declare a tax deduction for its truthful market worth on their federal tax return. Taxpayers would wish to itemize their deductions to learn.
Did I neglect to achieve out to some events? Most likely. May another person have completely different outcomes? Sure. However my private cost-benefit evaluation dictated that it was time to ditch donations.
I researched some recycling choices, and chosen Renewable Recycling Inc., based mostly in East Rockaway, New York. There are few different U.S. corporations that do such work, consultants mentioned. A listing compiled by MRC lists simply 55.
How a mattress is recycled
Mattresses are picked up and positioned right into a truck to be hauled to a recycling facility on the Prima Deshecha landfill in San Juan Capistrano, California, on March 10, 2022.
Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register by way of Getty Photographs
Greater than 75% of a mattress is recyclable, based on MRC. Some corporations put it at nearer to 90%.
Recyclers strip them of supplies like wooden, metal, and numerous foams and fibers, and promote them into secondary markets.
The supplies are then re-purposed: Shredded foam and fibers as carpet padding, animal beds or insulation; wooden as mulch and gasoline; and comes as scrap metal, for instance.
“For those who can recycle, it would give these supplies one other life for use as one thing else,” mentioned Romero of Charles County, which launched a mattress recycling program for residents on Aug. 1.
Extra from Private Finance:How EVs and gasoline vehicles examine on whole costHere’s methods to purchase renewable power out of your electrical utility8 simple — and low cost — methods to chop your carbon emissions
That re-use has different environmental advantages. For instance, there is a lowered have to extract or supply new supplies for manufacturing, which cuts greenhouse fuel emissions and water and power use, consultants mentioned.
Unusually, the Charles County service is basically free for residents. They will convey two objects a day — like a mattress and field spring — to the Charles County Landfill for recycling for no cost. Further objects value $10 per piece.
Residents recycled greater than 900 mattresses in September, over double officers’ estimates, Romero mentioned. The county contracts with a Baltimore-based firm, Deco Options, to handle the method.
Charles County’s motivations weren’t purely environmental, although.
Mattresses are cumbersome, taking on treasured actual property within the county landfill, Romero mentioned.
“A landfill is a restricted, finite area,” mentioned Peter Conway, the president of Spring Again Colorado, a recycler based mostly in Commerce Metropolis. “They need to put issues that break down, issues which can be simply compactible.”
“Mattresses are type of the antithesis of that,” Conway mentioned. He expects to divert 8 million kilos of waste from Colorado landfills this yr.
Why mattress recycling could be costly
Shredded previous mattress supplies.
Guillaume Souvant | Afp | Getty Photographs
The $95 payment I in the end paid to Renewable Recycling is “fairly commonplace” amongst mattress recyclers, Conway mentioned.
The expense lined mattress pickup from my Brooklyn condo and transport to the corporate’s warehouse in Oceanside, New York. (I may have saved $55 by dropping off the mattress myself, however I do not personal a automotive.)
Spring Again Colorado additionally prices $40 for every mattress and field spring {that a} shopper drops off. An extra payment of $60 or extra applies, relying on the journey distance, if a shopper asks for residence pickup.
Mattresses are tougher to recycle than different objects like plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard, mentioned Romero, of Charles County.
“They’re all made utterly in another way,” Romero mentioned. “There is no uniform building, and there are a number of various kinds of supplies used to make one mattress.”
The method is extra time- and labor-intensive, she mentioned. Typically, employees should break them down by hand.
For instance, cotton remnants have to be picked off metal mattress springs earlier than it may be shredded or baled on the market to scrap markets, based on the Mattress Recycling Council. Staples additionally must be faraway from wooden frames earlier than going to market, it mentioned. Every coil in a “pocket coil mattress” is individually wrapped in material and have to be separated, Romero mentioned.
‘Razor-thin margins’
Moreover, mattress supplies yield solely “modest revenues” when bought, Reid Lifset, a analysis scholar and resident fellow in industrial ecology at Yale Faculty of the Atmosphere, wrote in an e-mail.
These revenues usually rely upon fluctuating commodity costs.
“We do not set the worth for a ton of froth or metal,” Conway mentioned. “At some point we would get 18 cents a pound and the following week solely get 10 cents.”
For those who put your mattress in a landfill, it will in all probability be there for a whole bunch of years, simply sitting there.
Meg Romero
recycling and litter management superintendent for Charles County, Maryland
There should even be a market demand for these commodities — and generally these markets aren’t close by, including to delivery prices.
For instance, Spring Again Colorado used to ship all its foam and ticking to a recycling middle in California, Conway mentioned. It value the corporate about $2,000 to ship every truck load.
A few yr in the past, that California companion stopped accepting shipments: Demand had dried up for materials, Conway mentioned. He known as corporations as far afield as Mexico, Canada, India and Egypt to search out different placement, however in the end discovered a brand new companion in Texas, he mentioned.
“It is fairly razor-thin margins we function on,” Conway mentioned.
Spring Again Colorado earns further income from mattress pickups and drop-offs, and from partnerships with companies and municipalities, he mentioned.
“Somebody has to pay,” mentioned Marseille, of Arizona State College. “It often falls to shoppers.”
Shopper charges subsidize recycling efforts
Kosamtu | E+ | Getty Photographs
Some states and municipalities are making it less expensive for shoppers to recycle their mattresses.
For instance, Charles County, Maryland, funds its fledgling mattress program largely with taxpayer cash. About $150 of residents’ taxes are allotted to the county’s Environmental Sources division every year, for providers like curbside recycling, disposal of yard waste, oil and anti freeze — and now mattress recycling, Romero mentioned.
Three states — California, Connecticut and Rhode Island — have enacted mattress recycling legal guidelines since 2013. An identical program in Oregon is launching Jan. 1, 2025.
The legal guidelines require the mattress business to develop and administer state packages to gather and recycle discarded mattresses totally free.
The initiative is funded by shoppers, although.
Somebody has to pay. It often falls to shoppers.
Alicia Marseille
sustainability and round financial system professional at Arizona State College
People and establishments (like motels and dormitories) in such states pay a payment every time they purchase a mattress: $10.50 in California, $11.75 in Connecticut, $20.50 in Rhode Island and $22.50 in Oregon, mentioned Amanda Wall, a spokesperson for the Mattress Recycling Council. MRC is a nonprofit created by the Worldwide Sleep Merchandise Affiliation, a mattress business commerce group, to construct and run these state packages.
Retailers ahead these charges to MRC, which funds the patron recycling efforts. In the end, the charges subsidize free mattress drop-off and recycling at any MRC-funded assortment web site in taking part states, Wall mentioned. (Recyclers can nonetheless cost a payment for mattress pickup, she mentioned.)
The mattress business has pushed for related laws in New York, Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia this yr, and plans to maintain working with these state legislatures in 2025, Wall mentioned.
The legal guidelines are an instance of “prolonged producer duty” insurance policies states have adopted extra broadly, forcing corporations to bear some end-of-life duty for his or her merchandise, mentioned Marseille.
Some query whether or not shoppers shoulder an excessive amount of of the burden proper now.
“Firms aren’t making, for probably the most half, extra easy-to-recycle merchandise,” Conway mentioned. “It is on the patron to determine methods to responsibly do away with their objects in a aware method.”
He thinks it must be simpler and extra reasonably priced for shoppers to recycle to advertise that conduct.
“On the finish of the day, you probably have two choices, and one is throw it in a gap within the floor, and the opposite is recycle it, 95% of the individuals will go together with that cheaper choice,” Conway added.