Mattress Recycling Issues and Process

Posted by Michael Coates on June 1st, 2016

The sad and humble mattresses have become the most commonly dumped items. There are about 1.25 million mattresses sent to landfill each year in Sydney alone, and audits of Council’s Cleanup service identify them as one of the most popular rubbish collection items.

The average mattress in a landfill takes up to 0.75 cubic meters of space and contains 12.5 kg of steel, 2 kg of wood and 1.5 kg of foam.

An average fee of /mattress is in place at landfills across Sydney. Most people dispose of a mattress every 6-8 years. So, do the Math! Without recycling it is costing local councils and the community more than 70 million dollars every year!

So why recycle?

Recycling reduces costs to local councils and the community at large, apart from that mattresses do not compact well, which is why Sydney rubbish tips have a problem with them.

Most mattress components can be easily recycled and the markets for foam, steel and timber have been well established.

Take Your Rubbish Sydney Pty. Ltd understands that there should be proper waste management methods and has a whole division dedicated to the processing and recycling of mattresses. The components of each mattress once stripped down can be sent to local facilities for further processing.

Take Your Rubbish Sydney Mattress Recycling Process

Take your Rubbish Sydney, the rubbish removal experts has been dealing with Sydney’s discarded Mattress problem. “We could see a problem and so we set about working on a solution. We know that each mattress we recycle is one less mattress that stays on our streets or goes to landfill.”

The Take Your Rubbish team manually dismantles each mattress separating all the recoverable resources.

Steel Springs: These are sent to local metal recyclers

Foam / Padding: This can be processed and re-used as carpet underlay

Wood / Timber Framing: This can be sent to local chip board making facilities

Last Financial year, Take Your Rubbish Sydney processed 322 Single and 571 double mattresses.

“We still have a long way to go, but the success or our mattress recycling program is growing and with that success, the community at large benefits”

So next time you see a pile of old mattresses on the side of the road you can have some comfort in knowing that Take your Rubbish Sydney is out there working hard, taking responsibility and ensuring that what was once your household rubbish, i.e. your old mattresses are now having less of an environmental impact. And that is a job well done!

For more information visit at: http://www.takeyourrubbishsydney.com.au/