It’s a fact that End-of-life (EOL) mattresses are a growing problem not only in Australia but globally. Did you know that approximately 1.8 million mattresses are discarded each year in Australia alone? Placed end-to-end, they would stretch from Darwin to the tip of Tasmania.
Ability Enterprises has partnered with the Toowoomba Regional Council and the Lockyer Valley Regional Council to not only recycle mattresses and divert these large waste items from land fill, but to also provide jobs for local people who are facing barriers to employment.
Essentially this is a win for the environment and a win for our staff.
Mattresses are problematic items to send to Landfill with each mattress taking up approximately 0.75 cubic metres of space. They are not only bulky, but the wire in the mattress can cause damage to the compaction machinery. The good news is most components of a mattress can be recycled.
Typically, a mattress is built of 12.5kg of steel, 2kg of timber, 1.5kg of foam and the rest is wadding and other fabrics. When recycled, springs can be melted down into new steel and used in buildings, vehicles, and appliances. Recovered timber can be reused as woodchips to manufacture particleboard, animal bedding and mulch. Foam, wadding and latex can also be used to make up carpet underlay.
Our team successfully process approximately 180 mattresses every single week, and we are very proud of the role our organisation plays in reducing the creation of new landfill sites and the repurposing of the mattress materials to be recycled back into usable products.
