In its inaugural California Annual Report, the Mattress Recycling Council reported it diverted 955,059 units and more than 29 million pounds of material from landfills in 2016.
Approximately 40% of the mattresses collected for recycling were obtained from retailers and other large-volume users such as hospitals, hotels and universities. The remaining 60% came from the 122 collection sites established by MRC and the 50 collection events held during the year or was the result of a consumer-incentive program, which encouraged consumers to directly drop off mattresses at a recycler.
“The Bye Bye Mattress Program is seeing early success in California, but we know we still have work to do to make it more convenient and accessible for consumers, mattress retailers and other industries,” said Mike O’Donnell, MRC managing director. “We’re continually adding sites and events to the network and implementing changes to better divert discarded mattresses from large-volume sources such as mattress retailers, hotels and universities.”
Other notable first-year accomplishments MRC highlighted in the report included achieving program objectives such as launching the Illegally Dumped Mattresses Collection Initiative and implementing a robust public education campaign.
MRC submitted the annual report to the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) on June 30, 2017. CalRecycle staff reviewed the report and determined it was complete on July 24, 2017.
The full report is available on the California Program page of MattressRecyclingCouncil.org.
