You could call it a sleeper hit. Ten years after Connecticut kicked off an innovative recycling program, more than 1.7 million mattresses have been recycled statewide.
That’s enough to fill the XL Center three times over, according to Alison Keane, president of the Mattress Recycling Council, which coordinates the program.
“That’s 30,000 tons of material used to make other products instead of being landfilled or incinerated,” Keane said.
Connecticut’s Mattress Recycling Program – called “Bye Bye Mattress” — began in 2015.
If you haven’t bought a mattress since then (or you’re overdue to buy one), here’s how it works: When a customer buys a new mattress, they’re charged a small fee. That money funds more than 130 drop-off spots in the state. It also funds recycling services, which turn steel, wood and foam from old mattresses into new textile products, carpets and other materials, officials said.
The idea came in response to costly curbside dumping in cities like Hartford, said Pat Widlitz, a former state lawmaker who helped pass the program into law in Connecticut over a decade ago.
“When you have big apartment buildings, when people move out, or if something happens, the mattresses all end up on the sidewalk,” Widlitz said. “If they get dirty and they get rained on, they’re not worth very much.”
“But aside from that, it was a huge — unbelievably huge — expense for the city of Hartford,” she said.
At the time, local public works managers complained that cities across Connecticut were picking up a combined $1.3 million in excess costs to dispose of the unsightly and bulky sidewalk waste.
Cities like Hartford and Waterbury were especially hard hit, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on disposal fees each year, according to state officials.
Over the last decade, advocates say the program has drastically reduced curbside dumping.
“We’ve saved municipal governments $3.25 million in 10 years and that’s in annual waste disposal costs, which is a direct benefit to all consumers, taxpayers,” said Keane with the recycling council. “The program also reduces illegal dumping, which eases the pressure on the waste management system and that’s a benefit to the entire state.”
In addition to Connecticut, mattress recycling programs also operate in Rhode Island, Oregon and California.
