About half end up in landfillThree-quarters of the weight of a mattress is recyclable
“They’ve been people’s beds for 10 or 15 years, and then they’ve been in this fairly dusty environment, so they’re pretty disgusting,” he said.Soft Landing recycled 538,000 mattresses across all of its sites last year.Not a glamorous one, but perhaps a virtuous one. Mr Rasmussen is the NSW State Manager for Soft Landing, which handles around half the market share of the mattress recycling business in Australia.
But they are also one of the trickiest household items to recycle. Once the steel and foam have been removed, there is little remaining value in the contents of a mattress.The Australian Bedding Stewardship Council estimates that around 1.8 million mattresses are thrown out each year in Australia , and around 40 per cent of them – 22,140 tonnes – end up in landfill.
Mattress by mattress, the workers use pliers, box-cutters and knives to rip out the bedding. Foam is chipped and sent off to become carpet underlay. Timber is chipped and used as daily cover in landfill or mulched for garden and animal bedding.
HatAlexander One million each year? Where? On the planet or a particular country? Some of the claims made by green whingers are greatly exaggerated, so I am curious.