Inside Ashland’s new mattress recycling program
By Isobel Whitcomb
The quest for a good night’s rest can have a hidden environmental cost — Every day in the United States, 50,000 mattresses end up in landfills, where they can take at least 120 years to decompose.
“(Mattresses are) such a hodgepodge of different material types: wood, metal, polyester, cotton, plastic,” said Eric Ahnmark, operations manager for Recology Ashland, the city’s trash-and-recycling collections partner. “Some of those materials will break down pretty readily. Others not so much.” These materials don’t just take up space. As they slowly decompose, they release methane, a climate-warming greenhouse gas that traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in the short term.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Last year, Recology began offering a new service to residents of Jackson county: mattress recycling. The program is the first in the region.
Nearly every material that makes up a mattress has potential for a second life. Quilting and memory foam can be transformed into carpet padding; cotton into insulation; wood frames into mulch and fuel pellets; scrap metal into anything from steel bridges to automobiles.
Despite these clear uses for mattresses — and the even clearer harms of letting mattresses sit in landfills — finding a place to recycle a mattress is not an easy feat. As of 2020, only 56 recycling facilities in the United States offered this service, according to The Guardian. But breaking a used mattress down into its components isn’t an easy job. First, there’s the issue of moving it. Think about the last time you moved, and the struggle of muscling a heavy, floppy mattress down a hallway or up a flight of stairs. “It’s no easier once it becomes a discard,” said Recology Ashland’s general manager, Gary Blake.
Then, there’s the issue of separating the many layers of material in a mattress. It’s not an automated process. Instead, people have to physically rip apart quilting from foam, cotton from steel — all with very little help from machinery or tools. “It’s very labor intensive,” Blake said.
Recology doesn’t take care of that last step in the process. For that, they turn to Klamath Works, a jobs program in Klamath Falls that provides job training to people in need. In 2017, the organization began hiring recent Klamath Works graduates to dismantle used mattresses ready for recycling.
It was a small group of dedicated Ashlanders who identified Klamath Works and urged Recology to partner with the organization. “They approached me two years ago and said ‘How do we divert mattresses from landfills?’” Blake said. Blake was initially hesitant about the feasibility of introducing mattress recycling to Ashland, given the complexity of the process. But the activists, led by the late Louise Shawkat and Bob Altaras, kept pushing — and Recology is grateful for their efforts. “I gotta give credit due here,” Blake said.
So far, Recology has sent more than 1,500 mattresses to be recycled at Klamath Works, producing more than 20 semi trucks of marketable material. “Our mission statement as a company is we see a world without waste,” Blake said.
To recycle your mattress, drop it off at the Valley View Transfer Station, about five miles north of Ashland on North Valley View Road. Recology charges a drop-off fee of $9.40 — then they take care of the rest, Blake said: “It really is that easy.”
Isobel Whitcomb is a development assistant at the Ashland Climate Collaborative (ashlandclimate.org).
