USA - Mattress recycling growing, as path of Pala furniture illustrates

Sleeping, it turns out, poses a growing problem for garbage dumps. Recycling is coming slowly to the US$9 billion mattress industry, as the journey of mattresses purchased when the Pala Casino Spa & Resort (North County, California) opened in 2001 shows.

The North County Times reports that most top-drawer hotels replace their mattresses every five to 10 years. The mattresses often then are resold to budget chains; others go to liquidators, recyclers and resellers. Increasingly, municipalities and states are pressured to reduce waste and recycle more, but the economics of mattress recycling is tight.

Old mattress disposal is a "growing problem," said a 2004 study commissioned by the Alexandria, Va.-based International Sleep Products Association. Given their bulk, difficulty moving and expense to recycle, mattresses have eluded widespread recycling efforts.

"We were concerned about putting them in landfills - we did not want to do that," said Mary Crane, assistant general manager at Pala. The casino, resort and hotel operation is buying new mattresses for all 507 guest rooms.

American-made mattresses are very difficult to completely recycle because the steel springs tend to jam shredding machines. In Europe and elsewhere in the world, mattresses often are made without springs and thus are more easily recycled. An estimated 10 million mattresses are disposed of annually in the U.S., according to industry figures, and each mattress ranges in size from 27 to 60 cubic feet.

As dump fees and reuse pressures increase, opportunities have been created to rebuild mattresses. All of these old Pala mattresses will go through a state-mandated sanitizing process before they are rebuilt and resold. None will go to a dump.

Many of the mattresses will go to MBC Mattress Co. in Corona, which reckons it gets up to 500 used mattresses a day from various sources. The used mattresses are baked at 205 degrees for 90 minutes to kill germs, bedbugs and other possible invaders. Stained mattress covers are removed and replaced; foam layers also are replaced if stained or damaged. Old foam goes on to become carpet padding, pet bedding or insulation.

Unstained Pala mattresses will be resold directly by West Coast Liquidators in Anaheim, which is removing all the old mattresses from the hotel. Some already are on display in the company's showroom, the Pala label testifying to where the mattresses have worked since their manufacture by Sealy Mattress Manufacturing Co. in North Carolina.

Most of those Pala mattresses still have a lot of life left; properly cared for, the service life of a mattress is about 15 years, experts say.

MBC sells its remanufactured mattresses under its own label at retail stores. State law requires sellers to disclose that the mattresses are remanufactured.

At the 2 1/2-acre MBC site, stacks of mattresses in varying conditions await rebuilding. "We keep them out of landfills," says Brian Gargalas, whose family owns the business. Demand is rising for rebuilt mattresses, he says, as recession-stressed consumers consider the lower cost of a rebuilt mattress. Those Pala mattresses, for example, originally fetched about $1,200 retail; an MBC rebuild can sell for about $200.

Recycling mattresses also has provided jobs for entrepreneurs such as Fred Siegel of Chula Vista. Siegel collects about 25 mattresses a week, most for free or sometimes for a few dollars. He sells some to recyclers, but about 80 percent he sells to a broker for about $25 each, who then takes them to Mexico for resale.

Regardless of condition, the value of a mattress plummets when it is used.

Usually, West Coast Liquidators gets its mattresses and furniture for free, but "free is not free," founder John Grey said, explaining that it costs between $35 to $50 to remove and transport a mattress from a hotel. Sanitizing, storing and marketing the used mattresses adds expense; West Coast typically sells the used mattresses for between $125 to $150.

Grey has been in the mattress recycling trade for about three years, getting his stock from hotels that are refurbishing. It can take months to remove and resell mattresses from a big hotel such as the Pala.

Grey had been a wholesaler and car dealer; he fell into the mattress and furniture liquidation trade about three years ago when he was searching for some decent used furniture for a house he owns in Mexico. A friend said the Anaheim Hilton was replacing the mattresses and other furniture in all 1,600 of its rooms. Would Grey be interested in some of that?

He ended up removing and reselling the mattresses and furniture from all the rooms, replacing a company that had charged to remove and dispose of the furniture.

"It was overwhelming," Grey said, recalling that he lacked warehouse space or outlets to sell the vast volume of mattresses and furniture he had acquired.

Now, he says, the business is profitable and he "is doing something good for the planet."

Source: RRF