Over six million mattresses are thrown away in the UK every year.
In Orkney it is estimated that over 1,000 mattresses find their way to the dump. For the workers in Orkney Islands Council’s waste team and Employability Orkney, however, they have come together to reduce the number of mattresses in the islands which end up in landfill by cleaning them up for reusing.
The Orkney project was able to purchase industrial cleaning equipment through the Scottish Government’s Recycling Improvement Fund (RIF). Orkney’s award of £4,876 is in the small grant scheme category .
A total of £60 million has been awarded to 30 larger projects, from 21 local authorities across Scotland.
For Orkney it means that more mattresses will be diverted from being transported to a landfill site in Shetland, and be suitable for resale at Restart. OIC hope that ” around 20% of mattresses discarded or donated by households in Orkney could be cleaned, sanitised and re-used – potentially diverting around 200 mattresses for reuse annually, with an estimated weight of around 4.1 tonnes per annum (average 20kg per mattress).”
Amy Sutherland, Service Manager for Restart, said:
“Through our Restart shop, Employability Orkney already have a proven track record of encouraging reuse and recycling, and we’re confident the Orkney public will be delighted to hear about this new initiative and help make it a success too.
“By donating a mattress for cleaning, not only will you be helping reduce demand for new products, and reducing waste – you’ll be giving our supported employees the opportunity to develop new skill sets including the use of equipment, health and safety risk assessments, customer liaison, and other retail skills.
“We’d remind folks that we can collect mattresses for free and of course urge people to make most of any mattress collections they arrange with us by donating other items while they’re at it – just let us know about any bulky or big items so we can ensure there is space in the van.
“Our new equipment is also capable of refreshing our upholstery – so down the track we’ll be able to refresh upholstered furniture donated to us too. But for now we’re focussing on tackling the backlog of mattresses we’ve been holding aside for this project.”
Mattress Waste is a Global Problem
Across the UK most mattresses end up either being incinerated or in landfill, despite the materials having the potential to be 100% recyclable. The National Bed Federation (NBF) has a website, www.mattressdisposal.co.uk, which helps people locate the options for mattress recycling in their local town or city.
NBF conducted a UK wide survey to establish how local authorities were dealing with the mattress problem and found that Wales came out top for recycling rather than just sending mattresses to landfill or incineration. There was also a significant disparity in how much people were being charged by councils to have their unwanted mattresses uplifted. Termed as ‘bulky waste’ prices ranged from ‘free of charge’ to up to £76.30.
Some people are either unable to pay those charges, or don’t wish to, and so many of these unwanted mattresses end up being part of the 60,000 instances of flytipping reported in Scotland each year. Flytipping is not just unsightly but it costs £8.9million to clean up. That’s money from your taxes being diverted from local services.
This is a worldwide problem. An estimated 40 million mattresses are discarded in Europe every year of which only 17% are recycled with 50% ending up in landfill and 33% being incinerated.
In Australia 1.8million mattresses are dumped with many ending up in landfill. For the USA over 18 million mattresses are discarded annually. It is estimated that each mattress in landfill will take 120 years to fully decompose. If it is a memory foam mattress that extends to 1000 years. In a landfill site, dumped mattresses create spaces where gases can build up.
The project in Orkney may be small but it has the potential to make a big difference in the local community. Not only will it mean that fewer mattresses will be dumped but it will ensure that those that are in a very good condition can be resold for reuse.
Fiona Grahame