Recycling old mattresses was already a major challenge. But a recent snag has caused recycler Spring Back Colorado to feel even more deflated. Its buyer of the foam it strips out of used mattresses stopped taking the waste material last fall.
The unwanted foam, typically recycled into carpet padding, is now taking up valuable space in the Commerce City processing plant. And Peter Conway, Spring Back’s president, is torn about what to do.
“We have hundreds of thousands of pounds of foam and we’re just sitting on it,” Conway said. “Our only other option is to pay to throw it away.”
He doesn’t want to do that. He’s looking for an alternative. But recycling just doesn’t happen if there’s no one on the receiving end ready to turn the unwanted materials into something new, or newish. That’s what happened when China banned imports of unsorted paper for recycling in 2017, some cities and states just sent recyclables to the landfill.
But even with a foam buyer, it wasn’t easy or affordable. It costs Spring Back nearly $3,000 to put 40,000 pounds of baled foam on a 53-foot trailer and truck it to Southern California where the buyer, Future Foam, has a carpet cushion manufacturing and recycling plant.
As it turns out, the market for carpet hit the skids last year as consumers faced high interest rates, which caused home sales to slump. The home-improvement industry likewise has seen less demand, with retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s reporting softer sales last quarter. Trex Co., the manufacturer of composite decking made from 95% recycled plastic film and reclaimed wood, noted in its latest annual report on sustainability practices that the amount of recycled polyethylene had dropped by 22% to 337 million pounds in 2022.
Recycled goods need practical uses
Recycled products, like steel and cardboard, have a more regular business cycle. Those industries stockpile cardboard or steel during slow periods and ramp up production before the holiday gifting season or summer construction period. But mattresses are more challenging and that’s largely due to what parts of a mattress can be reused or processed, said Justin Stockdale, director of CHaRM & Zero Waste Hauling for Eco-Cycle in Boulder.
“I’ve always been concerned about foam because the typical traditional end market for foam is carpet padding. There’s only so much wall-to-wall carpeting sold in the U.S. so there’s a direct physical cap on that market,” Stockdale said. “We saw this a couple of years ago on film plastics. COVID saw this huge spike in people building decks and so Trex was selling out of all of their products. And then we recover from COVID and that whole home improvement trend settles down and all of a sudden Trex has got a glut of material they don’t know what to do with.”
Trex, which accepts plastic grocery bags and other plastic film at its NexTrex recycling bins located at King Soopers and other stores, did figure it out. It’s expanding. It’s planning to open its third manufacturing plant in Little Rock, Arkansas, by 2026, because it expects demand to increase, at least someday, the company’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal last month.
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Read moreIn an email to The Colorado Sun, Leslie Adkins, Trex’s group vice president of marketing and environmental, social and governance development, said that its customers tend to be higher-income homeowners and haven’t cut back spending on their homes completely. Its market isn’t really new homeowners but existing ones who can afford to improve their existing houses.
“With interest rates remaining high in the U.S., it has dampened the number of people moving from their homes; however, we find that when people decide to stay put, they turn to ways to improve their homes and outdoor projects, and replacing a wood deck with composite or adding a new Trex deck are often at the top of their lists,” Adkins said in an email. “Accordingly, we have not decreased our demand for recycled content.”
There hasn’t been the same economic cushion for the mattress foam recycling industry.
“The supply of material is more than demand,” said Anshul Gupta, Future Foam’s chief operating officer. “Sales are down for durable goods, which includes carpet installs, and that’s somewhat tied to the housing market also because people replace carpet when they buy homes. And not many homes are selling. There is less demand right now than historically.”
Other trends like consumer preferences for hardwood flooring or other hard surfaces have also cut into carpet sales and the need for carpet recyclers to buy old mattress foam. And the mattress industry has a different recycling economy in states like California, which tacks on a $10.50 fee at time of purchase to take care of the cost to recycle the mattress later.
That led Future Foam to reevaluate its recycling partners. It stopped taking deliveries from Spring Back mainly because of its distance from the recycling plant.
“If we can get material closer to the facility, we’re not using trucking as much and expending more CO2 and all of that,” Gupta said. “That’s where Colorado comes (back) into the picture once we cannot receive enough product from Southern California. I think it’s probably short term but it’s hard to say because it’s dependent on demand.”
Mattress recycling is 5th on Colorado list to address
The mattress industry continues to look for alternative end uses. The Mattress Recycling Council has funded a few research projects, including one by a Pittsburg State University researcher working on turning recycled mattress textiles into “composite products suitable for construction, automotive and other applications.”
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Why a Colorado mattress recycler sends old mattresses to the landfill
Spring Back Colorado, the Commerce City nonprofit, is desperately trying to figure out how to recycle pocket-coil mattresses affordably. It’s a challenge for the entire industry, even in states with mattress recycling laws.
Read moreIn Colorado, a law passed in 2022 to try to try to figure out more ways to give all materials an afterlife. Circular Colorado, which won the state’s contract to develop the Circular Economy Development Center and find new end markets for recyclable materials last year, is working on a plan for all materials, including mattresses, said Laurie Johnson, founder and CEO.
“Mattresses are a huge problem and absolutely solvable. Even with foam. It doesn’t need to go to California. I mean that’s one place,” she said. “In a circular economy, recycling is one piece of it. And then it’s really manufacturing and transportation. … It’s where the markets are for it and if the markets aren’t here, the transportation costs usually make it not feasible to do.”
But while the organization is still figuring out the infrastructure and process of reusing most trashed materials, Johnson is dealing with higher priorities, like plastics.
“Mattresses are about fifth on our list of materials that will get addressed over the next few years,” she said.
Conway, at Spring Back, hasn’t given up. He isn’t sending foam to the landfill, at least not yet. As a nonprofit, Spring Back tries to break even while at the same time fulfill its social impact goals, including hiring workers who have a tough time getting jobs.
But there’s about 250,000 pounds of baled foam taking up space at Spring Back’s warehouse. He’s been calling all the leads to mattress recyclers and finally found one limited option. A buyer in Texas picked up a load last week, but it’s smaller than what Future Foam could handle and it’s taking a bit more manpower as the new buyer’s foam processing machines require “clean” foam, or material without any staples or steel.
“They just picked up a truck of it,” with about 30 bales or 30,000 pounds of foam, Conway said. “We’re getting less on the foam side but we’re not paying the hauling fees so it’s kind of a net neutral. But right now, there’s still only one truck a week. … So at least that’s basically helping us offset what we produce on a weekly basis. We probably make 20 to 25 bales a week so we’re not clearing out a huge amount of inventory but we’re not adding to the backlog.”