By MaryHelen Swanson

Rest assured, your old mattress could be useful in more than one way.

On June 21, the Chisago County Board of Commissioners approved an agreement with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for mattress recycling. Through a program with the East Central Solid Waste Commission the mattresses will be taken to Goodwill in Duluth for recycling.

Mattress recycling is important because if disposed of in a landfill, old mattresses waste valuable air space and if recycled, provide easily recycled materials.

Chisago County received a $5,000 grant from the MPCA to purchase a trailer for storage of mattresses for such a program. The county will charge $8 per mattress to be recycled, mattresses to be disposed of will not be accepted for this program but can be taken to the Cambridge Transfer Station for a fee of $12.

Old, dry mattresses will be accepted at Recycling for Wildlife in Harris. The county will pay RFW $1 per mattress they handle. The ECSWC will pick them up and take them to Mora in preparation for the trip to Duluth.

According to a fact sheet from the MPCA, the average mattress weighs 55 pounds. About 38,200,000 mattresses are purchased each year in the United States, including institutions, hospitals and individuals.

Mattress composition includes: 54.4 percent steel, 10 percent polyurethane foam, 25.6 percent cotton/felt and 10 percent wood.

The average life of a mattress is 10.8 years. In a landfill, mattress compaction rate is 360 pounds per cubic yard, garbage compaction rate is 1,600 pounds per cubic yard.

In the recycling process, one person working on a spin table can process 35 mattresses per day including time for separation of commodities and baling.

Markets for mattresses include:

ï Mattress covers or toppers (foam sewn to cover) are used to make low-end carpet pads;

ï Mattress foam or polyurethane foam, is used to manufacture high-end carpet pads;

ï Cotton stuffing is used as filler for packaging, shipping pads, wall insulation and road noise abatement materials in vehicles;

ï Steel is used to manufacture new steel products and;

ï Wood is either shredded to provide mulch or composted.

Nationally, 70 percent of old bedding is returned to the retailer at time of purchase for disposal, 30 percent of old bedding is disposed of through waste hauler or self-hauled to a disposal site.

In the northeast area of Minnesota, those numbers are 59 percent and 41 percent respectively.

For more information on the program, contact Gary Noren at Environmental Services at (651) 213-0447.