Transcripts

SPEAKER: When Minneapolis residents throw out old mattresses, it costs taxpayers big money. The city, which collects the mattresses along with other recyclables, spends about $600,000 a year to dispose of them. That's why Minneapolis might ask the legislature to create a statewide program for recycling mattresses. Curtis Gilbert has our report.

CURTIS GILBERT: Mattresses create lots of headaches for trash collectors. They're bulky and awkward to move. They don't like to stay buried in landfills because they're full of air. Instead, they slowly work their way to the surface, rising from the Earth like zombies. They cause problems for trash incinerators, too, because the springs don't burn. Since 2012, Hennepin County has banned Minneapolis from dumping mattresses at the garbage burning power plant downtown. So the city had to start recycling them-- a lot of them.

DAVE HERBERHOLZ: We pick up over 34,000 mattresses a year from our residential collections.

CURTIS GILBERT: Minneapolis Solid Waste and Recycling Director Dave Herberholz says, each of those mattresses and box springs costs about $18 to recycle. That's far more expensive than any other recyclable item the city handles.

DAVE HERBERHOLZ: With collection of mattresses, and then the value of the material that is actually recycled out of the mattress, it does not come close to offsetting the internal costs.

CURTIS GILBERT: It's expensive because a mattress is like a layer cake. The only way to salvage the materials is to separate the layers. That's a time intensive process. At Second Chance Recycling in Minneapolis, the average worker can dismantle about 35 beds per shift with the help of a utility knife.

The most valuable part of the mattress by far, is the steel cage of springs. They're strung together into trains, 12 beds long, and fed into a custom built baling machine. The 250 pounds bales will eventually get shipped out, sold, and melted down. The foam becomes carpet pads, and the cotton gets used in the oil fields of North Dakota to soak up small spills. Kevin Cannon supervises the non-profit recycling operation.

KEVIN CANNON: There's a lot of hard work involved in this. It's dirty work, and the whole point of it is to keep stuff out of the landfill. And I don't know how you would do that without doing it by hand and separating out what you can sell and what's left over that can still at least be burnt for energy.

CURTIS GILBERT: Most mattresses in Minnesota still end up in landfills. Recycling them is a relatively new idea. There are only a few dozen organizations doing it nationwide. But that's expected to change thanks to new laws that passed last year in three states-- Connecticut, Rhode Island, and California. The laws, which will go into effect over the next two years, will tack a recycling charge onto the sale of new mattresses.

In Connecticut, the first state to pass such a law, the proposed fee is $9 per mattress or box spring. That money would cover the cost of recycling the product when it reaches the end of its useful life. The International Sleep Products Association, a trade group for mattress manufacturers, helped craft the legislation in the three states. Vice President Chris Hudgens says supporting the recycling laws gave the industry more control over how the programs would work.

CHRIS HUDGENS: We wanted consumers to know what they're paying for. We wanted better awareness of the program. We want them to understand the process. And we also thought that the industry could run it better [CHUCKLES] and at a lower cost than the State could.

CURTIS GILBERT: Hudgens Group is focused on implementing the existing laws, and isn't advocating for other states to adopt similar measures right away. But Minneapolis may start its push at the legislature anyway. The City Council will decide next month whether to add mattress recycling to its lobbying agenda. Curtis Gilbert, Minnesota Public Radio News, Minneapolis.