Workers dismantling a mattress.
Thomas Lohnes | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Consumers in a handful of states are paying to assist make the mattress industry extra eco-friendly — and extra states might comply with go well with?
Four states — California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island — now levy a flat price on any mattress or field spring residents buy on-line or in a brick-and-mortar store.
The retail charges, which vary from $16 to about $23, assist finance state recycling packages that divert used mattresses from landfills — a part of a growing coverage initiative to spice up the round economic system throughout frequent home goods from plastic packaging to paper merchandise and electronics.
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Americans discard about 15 million to twenty million mattresses annually — a median of fifty,000 a day, in response to the Mattress Recycling Council, a nonprofit fashioned by the bedding business to function state recycling packages.
Yet, greater than 75% of a mattress is recyclable, in response to MRC: its wooden, metal, foams and fibers may be stripped, bought and reused.
Oregon applied a recycling price on Jan. 1. State residents who purchase a brand new mattress or field spring pay an additional $22.50 per unit, mirrored as a “stewardship evaluation” on customers’ receipts.
California and Connecticut raised their retail charges to $16 per unit at the start of 2025, up from $10.50 and $11.75, respectively. Rhode Island raised its per-unit price to $20.50 final yr.
The business can also be working with lawmakers in Massachusetts, Maryland, New York and Virginia to ascertain related packages, in response to MRC spokesperson Amanda Wall.
Recycling choices are few however increasing
Douglas Sacha | Moment | Getty Images
There are presently few choices for Americans who wish to recycle a used mattress or field spring.
A directory compiled by the Mattress Recycling Council lists simply 58 firms nationwide that recycle such merchandise. Those in states that have not enacted recycling legal guidelines usually cost charges to customers for drop-off and residential pickup. (I recently paid $95 for such a service in New York City, for instance.)
Oregon officers say their program will make it simple for customers to recycle undesirable mattresses and scale back unlawful dumping.
It goals to ascertain “new handy places in each county for residents to drop off their mattresses” and in addition create recycling sector jobs, in response to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality website.
The state recycling efforts are examples of “prolonged producer duty” legal guidelines gaining traction within the U.S.
“With EPR, producers of merchandise or packages develop into accountable for managing them once they develop into waste,” according to Reid Lifset, a resident fellow in industrial ecology at Yale University and editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. EPR packages present a brand new supply of funding to make the recycling system sustainable, Lifset mentioned.
In the case of state mattress packages, retailers move alongside the buyer charges to the Mattress Recycling Council to fund every state’s respective program, Wall mentioned.
In Oregon, for instance, greater than half (about $12) of the $22.50 retail price will fund program operational prices in 2025, with the rest funding issues like start-up prices, administration, and public training and promoting.
There are greater than 300 mattress assortment websites in states with recycling packages, in response to MRC. The websites settle for discarded mattresses without charge. (They might cost for house pickup, nevertheless.)
