by Alex Murray
6 minute read
When you’re buying a new bed or mattress, it’s easy to forget about the hidden expense and hassle of parting company with your old one. So how do the reuse and recycling options for an old bed or mattress shape up? Is there something you can do that is easy, economical and environmentally friendly?
The first thing to do is to press the company you’re getting your shiny new bed from, to see if they’ll take away your old bed and mattress. Some major retailors do have recycling facilities in place for returned mattresses, but there will often be a fee for such a service. Dreams, for example, charge £39 for a collection. They subcontract this service to SITA, and estimate roughly 25-30% of the mattresses their beds replace are recycled via their take-back scheme.
However, if the retailer won’t help, there are a number of alternatives available that could save you money and make sure your unwanted articles go to a good home. For many of us, the first port of call for our unwanted stuff is the local council. Most offer bulky waste collections: some are free, but with budgets getting ever tighter, many now charge a significant fee, and you may have to book a collection a couple of weeks in advance. Some councils have arrangements in place with local reuse charities, and others have recycling programs in place, but it’s a very mixed picture and it’s important to look into the current setup of your local authority if you want to make sure that your old bed won’t just go to landfill.
Bed giveaway
Luckily, greener alternatives are available. Freegle is an offshoot of the US-based Freecycle, and both operate in the UK. It is a locally-run service that operates groups and uses web forums to help match spare items with people who want them. Its use is growing and it recently won the “Greener Scotland” community award.
Provided that your bed and mattress are still in good working order, this allows you to ensure that they’re reused, and it won’t cost you a penny. If you’re new to the system, you will have to sign up so that you can post items on their forum, but once you’re a member you can make all of the arrangements online, so you don’t even have to incur any call costs. Typically the person who wants the item arranges for collection, so you won’t have to sort out collection. Whilst Freeglers come from all sorts of backgrounds, it is particularly attractive to those who are disadvantaged, so you may well find that your unwanted items are helping to give someone a leg up when they really need it.
However, as anyone who’s used Freegle a few times will know, it can have its drawbacks. If the item you post is popular, you could find yourself dealing with quite a few e-mails about it; equally, if you’re unlucky with your timing, it might not attract any interest and you might have to re-list it several times. Not every Freegler is reliable, either, and someone who seems adamant about picking it up an appointed time can mysteriously and inconveniently drop out of contact.
Spring is in the air: mattresses contain valuable recyclable materials. Photo by Angie from Sawara, via Wikimedia Commons.
Once you’ve decided to give your old bed away, you are rather tied in to waiting for it to be collected, so you’ll need the space to store it, unless you’re organised enough to arrange for everything to happen on the same day. By contrast, if you’re just dumping your bed through the council’s bulky waste system, it may not matter so much if you leave it outside exposed to the weather and other perils (insects, vermin, passers-by…) until it gets collected. For the truly environmentally committed, there may also be the concern that you don’t know for sure whether the mattress will end up being reused or recycled responsibly once the person you pass it on to has finished with it.
Charity begins at home
Charities are also a good option, with some advantages over Freegle. Some are able to pick-up bulky items from your home at a specified time and collections usually take place as arranged. You can sleep easy on your new bed in the knowledge that your old bulky goods will be raising money for charity. Local charities are always a good first point of call when looking to reuse bulky items, as many won’t have the same restrictions in place as their national counterparts. You’ll also find that local charities tend to offer quicker and more convenient collection times.
While charities will often be more than happy to help, you may have to wait a while for your collection date, as charities understandably want to limit costs by having a collection van visit an area only when it can make multiple pick-ups. Also, not all charities accept bulky items due to the associated transport costs, and some exclude mattresses due to concerns over health, hygiene and flammability issues. Your bed frame on the other hand shouldn’t be a problem.
But if you’ve exhausted the local charity options, or it’s taking too long to track down a mattress suitor on Freegle, or your mattress has simply seen better days and needs to be put to bed, what other options are there?
Beds unmade
The middle ground (or is that waste-land?) between council collections and charitable reuse is now being occupied by responsible companies such as Collect Your Old Bed, who offer an ethical mattress recycling service. Privately run bed and mattress recycling companies are now often a more affordable option than a council collection.
According to Zero Waste Scotland, the average double mattress in the UK weighs just over 21kg and consists of 6.2kg steel (29%), 5.3kg PUR foam (25%), 7.7kg ‘mixed textiles’ (36%) and 1.6kg of natural fibres (7.5%). Together with the energy involved in its manufacture, this gives it a carbon footprint of 79kg of CO2 equivalents. Technology is now in place to recycle 100% of materials recovered from old mattresses and recovering these materials represents a substantial environmental saving, as well as being a source of income for the recycler.
Despite the range of environmentally friendly options available, just 15% of the 7.9 million mattresses disposed of each year in the UK are at present diverted from landfill – that’s 25,000 tonnes out of a total of 169,000 tonnes ‘consumed’. With the UK seemingly off track to reach its current Waste Framework Directive recycling target for 2020 of 50% – despite the ambitious 70% goals set by Wales and Scotland for 2025. That’s a lot of material to lose to landfill when the mechanisms exist to reuse and recycle much more. With each mattress representing nearly 5% of the 423kg of waste the average person produces annually, reusing or recycling your old bed is one of the biggest contributions you can make to cutting waste down to size.
Interesting stuff Alex, thank you.
In my opinion, in terms of the actual bed (as opposed to just the mattress) thinking ahead and buying a durable item is definitely the way to go and it need not be the expensive option. I’m are lucky enough to live near a reclamation yard who also sell furniture and replaced our bed for less than £100 with an Edwardian mahogany and cast iron bed frame. It needed stripping and refinishing which took me two weekends but it’s definitely going to out last us!