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Bulky and heavy – You can’t simply toss away a mattress. It requires planning. You hire a pick-up truck or drop it off at a waste collection centre near you or wait for city councils to organise hard rubbish collection drives. But discarding a mattress is not just a logistical problem, it also hurts the environment big time!
Yes, your mattress is choking the planet
Around 1.25 million mattresses are sent to landfills in Australia every year and each mattress occupies up to 0.75 cubic metres of landfill space. Here’s why it’s a problem.
- One, it overburdens our landfills. Even heavy-duty landfill equipment fail to compact the mattress, plus they face the danger of damage or jam at the hands of the innerspring.
- Two, components like steel and polyurethane foam don’t degrade for decades, which make majority of the mattresses nothing but an indefinite guests in landfills.
Australia mattress disposal options
But don’t sweat, there are many ethical and responsible ways to trash your mattress. Depending on your location and the condition of the mattress, you can either donate the mattress, opt for free/paid mattress removal or give it to a recycling unit.
Here’s how…
Mattress removal (Free)
- The Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group supports Melbourne’s 31 metropolitan councils to collect and refurbish end-of-life mattresses.
- Some local councils offers free mattress pickup and recycling. To find out if your council supports such programs, click here.
Give it to a recycling unit (Paid)
This option is best if…
It’s an end-of-life mattress.
Who can I give mattresses for recycling?
- Softlanding is unarguably the largest mattress recycler in Australia. It’s recovered 17,963 tonnes of steel springs, 8.297 tonnes of timber and of 5,914 foam from 190,296 mattresses so far.
- While Softlanding services most of Australia, Bedcollect operates within Melbourne and Mattrec collects from Illawarra, Sutherland Shire, Western Sydney, Southern Highlands and Macarthur Nowra.
- 1800-GOT-JUNK is another mattress removal and recycling service.
- You can also hire a skip bin or book a rubbish removal service to discard your mattress responsibly.
Donate to a charity
This option is best if…
Where can I donate?
Charities like St Vincent de Paul Society, The Salvation Army, Haven Home Safe, Habit for Humanity, The Generous & The Grateful and donatedirect.org.au welcome pre-loved mattresses. An equally noble idea would be to call up dog shelters and check if their pooches need new beds.
Resell it
This option is best if…
Where can I resell it?
Now let’s tell you how not dispose of your mattress
- Don’t dump the mattress on the kerb, roadside or abandoned areas. Not only is it an uncivil thing do, it’s considered illegal in cities like Sydney and Melbourne and can levy fines. This unlawful act of dumping the trash is called fly-tipping.
- Don’t burn mattresses as they are filled with toxic materials such as foam, synthetic latex and flame retardants. The fumes released can irritate eyes, throat, nose and even cause nausea, if you are in close proximity. In fact, burning rubbish in the open/in the backyard is prohibited in Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle regions and other council areas under the Clean Air Regulation.
And should you not want to throw away your dear mattress…
Get creative. Reuse and upcycle your mattress!
Turn it into a porch sofa or a bed for your pet. You might find it very funny but people extract innersprings and bed frames to make gardening walls, jewellery holders, vases, book stands, kitchen racks, chandeliers, memory boards, office organisers, headboards for bed, compost boxes and what not.
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