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The Environmental Problem

Scale of the Problem

Each year 25 million mattresses and box-springs are discarded nationwide, half of which end up in landfills. The tri-state area alone throws away enough mattresses to stack up as high as 1,000 Empire State Buildings.

Wasting Resources

Mattress components are 90% recyclable. Sending these materials to landfills wastes valuable resources—steel, foam, wood, cotton, and other fibers.

Decomposing Waste

Mattresses take more than 100 years to fully decompose in a landfill. Yet it only takes 15 minutes to prepare the components for reuse in other products.

Filling Up Limited Landfill Space

Mattresses are big, and designed to maintain their shape. Sending them to landfills fills up the limited space faster because they don’t compress easily or efficiently.

Economic Cost of Exporting Waste

NY and NJ lead the nation in the amount of waste hauled to out-of-state landfills, many of which are over 400 miles away. Exporting waste is costly, especially in light of rising energy prices and landfill tipping fees.

Environmental Cost of Exporting Waste

The amount of greenhouse gasses generated by exporting the tri-state’s end-of-life mattresses would be equivalent to the carbon sequestered annually by 1,300 acres of pine forests.