About 1.8m mattresses are thrown out each year in Australia, often seen dumped on the side of the road. Laid end to end, that would be enough to stretch from Darwin to the tip of Tasmania.
Mattresses last between eight and 10 years, and are usually kept for longer. But getting rid of one is not easy, and 40% of those discarded end up in landfill.
With Australia’s landfill space expected to reach capacity by 2025, how can we reduce mattress waste by giving them a second life?
Putting landfill to bed
Mattresses are not easy to recycle, as their components often include intertwined metal springs, foam, timber and other fabrics.
But at Liverpool city council, a machine nicknamed the Croc shreds mattresses apart.
“Each croc is the size of a large truck, requires an excavator to feed mattresses into it and works like an oversized tree chipper,” says Liverpool mayor Ned Mannoun.
“Complete mattresses go in, and little bits of steel and flock come out.”
The Croc came to the council in November 2023. As well as a recycling initiative, it is a cost-saving machine.
“It shows you can save money while reducing your environmental impact,” the council’s acting chief executive, Jason Breton, says.
“Our team saw that the cost of disposing of mattresses has climbed by 44% from about $32 five years ago, to about $46 today.”
While many local councils have a mattress collection service, not all have a recycling system in place and Breton says having mattresses taken away by a private contractor can cost councils close to $800,000 a year.
The Australian Bedding Stewardship, endorsed by the ACCC, is working to move the bedding industry towards a circular economy, with certified mattress recyclers and a range of businesses involved in take-back programs.
For 13 years, Soft Landing has been collecting end-of-life mattresses from local councils and government areas to recycle. They operate out of Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra and Perth.
“[Mattresses] are so big, they’re hard to store, they’re hard to get rid of, so they do end up being thrown out, and not always with a lot of thought or consideration to where they may end up,” says general manager David Petrie.
Getting them off the street
Soft Landing collects about half a million mattresses a year.
In the course of a day, just under 2,000 mattresses are brought in. They are deconstructed by hand, separating three main materials: steel, timber and foam.
“We effectively dissect it,” says Petrie. “We cut the fabric off the top … that gets us to the steel within the mattress.” About 45% of a mattress’s weight is steel. “Once you get that out, that actually becomes reusable in the scrap steel market,” he says.
Steel manufacturers are using scrap as part of the manufacturing of new steel, as it has a smaller carbon footprint than making it from scratch. Foam of the mattress, which is also reusable, goes into the manufacturing and remanufacturing of floor coverings – primarily carpet underlay. And timber, often from the mattress base, can be stripped back and recycled for new bases if in mint condition, or be diverted to mulch, and re-engineered timber.
But the “flock” – loose, unspun fibres, commonly cotton, wool, polyester or latex – is the hardest to recycle.
“I don’t think there’s an appreciation of the scale of the challenge,” Petrie says.
Liverpool council, which is collaborating with the University of New South Wales on socioeconomic development and community wellbeing initiatives, aims to be able to transform the flock into viable materials for construction projects.
What can you do?
Taking your mattress to the tip should be the last resort. Many local councils provide free kerb collection and some bedding manufacturers offer take-back schemes.
Importantly, Petrie says consumers shouldn’t be put off by having to pay a small price to have their mattress taken away and recycled, given the work involved. “Many people are still of the view that the disposal of an end-of-life product has zero cost attached to it,” he says.
For a small cost, the best thing people can do is direct their worn-out mattress away from landfill to alleviate the bulky and complex material’s impact on the environment.
