Why is Today’s Mattress Disposal Process Dead Wrong?
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Today, with the rise of public consciousness, good people like you are looking for effective alternatives to conserve energy, to protect the environment and to create jobs here in the United States. The people’s need for environmental protection and sustainable development forced the U.S. government to invest heavily in the recycling and reuse industries to mitigate the effects of environmental degradation to the air, land and water as well as divert wastes from our limited resource – the landfill.
There is an almost endless variety of recyclable materials currently in the consumer discarded materials going to our landfills. Mattresses, box springs and stuffed furniture are large items frequently discarded by consumers and these items take up a great deal of landfill space and have the additional downside of their steel coil springs damaging landfill equipment via entanglement in the machinery.
The United States is fighting an uphill battle trying to alter its peoples’ “Out of site – out of mind” culture by constantly trying to promote the recycling process. Recycling is a costly procedure and manufacturing finished goods using raw materials is also a costly procedure. When the cost of manufacturing finished goods using recycled materials is less expensive than manufacturing the same quality of finished goods using raw materials only – then recycling makes sense.
Additionally, when we take a broader look at the cost-benefit analysis of recycling, we see that the social, economic and environmental benefits generated by recycling process have value that weigh heavily into the analysis. For mattress recycling, the current illegal mattress dumping done most everywhere is an eyesore, a rodent breeding ground, and a property devaluing act that downgrades the quality of life in areas where mattresses are just dumped. The local tax payer then foots the bill to pick up these discarded mattresses and transport them to a legal disposal site – today that is usually the landfill.
Is Mattress Recycling a Viable Alternative To Landfill Disposal?
Everyone knows that the growing environmental concern has made recycling a common practice for items which when recycled can be manufactured into new products ranging from paper bags to park benches and even constructing homes from scrap metals and equipments. However, the demand for recycled goods varies depending on the market scenario as recycling only makes money when there is a demand for the materials being recycled.
Mattresses have many components, the main recycling money makers being cotton, foam, felt and steel from mattresses with coil springs. When the cotton, foam, felt and steel markets have demand levels that not only cover the cost of sorting and shipping these commodities – but have a little extra for profit – then mattress recycling is indeed a viable alternative to landfill disposal.
Thus, to answer the question this article poses, today’s mattress disposal habit of dumping mattresses illegally along the roadsides or hauling them to landfills is dead wrong as it is no longer necessary. Taking mattresses to mattress recycling facilities where they are diverted from landfills and illegal dumping has a social value and when the Recycler has a bountiful market gobbling up the cotton, foam, felt and steel components of the mattress recycling process – then the environment is blessed with a win-win alternative to mattress disposal dumping.
During good economic times, recycling mattresses has already proven to be an effective alternative to sending unwanted mattresses to landfills. However, skeptics yet believe that mattresses can not be recycled due to the coil springs. Now that the Spring Compactor Patent Pending Invention exists – coil springs can be compacted and the steel, cotton, foam and felt components of mattresses sold to recycling markets.
The social benefits generated by mattress recycling are much more than the material benefits from this process. The mattress recycling industry has to grow more in order to minimize if not eliminate mattress dumping. We need to promote mattress recycling and increase awareness that mattress recycling works today.
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Source by Cecil Taylor
