P.E.I.'s free mattress recycling program saving space in lone landfill

P.E.I.'s free province-wide mattress recycling program has kept more than 35,000 mattresses out of the landfill since it started in 2016.

The Island Waste Management Corporation sends a truckload of mattresses weekly to a recycling company in Montreal called Matt Canada. 191 truck loads have gone so far, with 200 mattresses per load.

"The biggest reason was mattresses … really take up a lot of space in the landfill and are very hard to compact," says Gerry Moore, CEO of the Island Waste Management Corporation.

"Mattresses and box springs cause operational issues when you try to compact them because the springs normally get caught up in heavy equipment and it takes a lot of hours to pull or cut that material out."

Moore said newer models of mattresses, without springs, also cause extra issues when they go to landfill sites.

"They are very hard to compact, ones that have a lot of memory foam in them that are more foam perhaps than wood, metal and springs," Moore said. 

"A lot of the newer ones are actually harder to compact than the older type mattresses."

Recycled in Montreal

The mattresses shipped to Matt Canada are taken apart and the materials are recycled, said Joel Chateauneuf who's owned Matt Canada since 2011. 

"Usually, we take off the first layer and after that it's a mix of fabric and foam," Chateuneuf said. 

"After that, there's the springs so we take it apart with different machines, we make bales of those products and the steel we shred and then we resell to specified recyclers."

Matt Canada recycles 150,000 mattresses per year and one of its biggest customers is IKEA Canada.

Chateauneuf describes the contract with P.E.I. as "a really good opportunity."

"It's one of our good customers for sure, maybe not the biggest one but it's important business for sure," Chateauneuf said.

"It's a big number. They come every week."

Breaking even

The mattresses are collected at IWMC depots across the Island, free of charge to individual households.

There is a fee for commercial operations, such as bed and breakfasts or hotels.

Moore said the cost of disposing the mattresses is close to $20 per unit. Space in the landfill, he said, costs between $20 and $35 a cubic metre. 

"So if you looked at an average-sized mattress, we're probably breaking even in doing what we're doing," Moore said.

Moore said there is lots of interest from the other provinces in Atlantic Canada in what P.E.I. is doing.

All of them, he said, "have looked at what we're doing and trying to emulate or copy perhaps down the road."

Disposal fee

Moore said eventually he would like to see a stewardship program for mattresses, similar to the one for electronics.

"What that would mean is basically when you purchased a mattress you would probably see a small fee attached to it for the ultimate disposal of that mattress," Moore said.

"So that basically the costs can be incurred when someone purchases a mattress for the ultimate disposal."

Moore said stewardship programs are expanding across the country.

"The price of the mattress can range anywhere from $500 to $2,500 or even more for some luxury ones," Moore said. 

"Having a $20 disposal fee on that I don't think is a lot to ask consumers to have them disposed of and recycled properly."

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