The number of places you’ll see an old mattress dumped is endless – in a river, behind a rubbish skip, by the side of the road. Some people just don’t know what to do with their old mattresses, and who can blame them? A lot of poor-quality mattresses stay in circulation, passed down to younger generations, but if a mattress isn’t good enough for you, then it isn’t good enough for anyone else. It is quite a strange thing to try and get rid of, but there are certain points you can follow to ensure that it is disposed of correctly.
The first thing to do would be to call your local council, as they will have a service that is dedicated towards picking up larger items that are ready for disposal. If you’ve ever gotten rid of a refrigerator or an oven, then you’ll likely have used this service, and the same applies to mattresses. Mattresses are quite difficult to dispose of and don’t decompose very rapidly, so it will likely be placed on a landfill site with other mattresses. Some areas, however, have recycling schemes for mattresses, and when mattresses are treated correctly, they can be broken down and the individual parts recycled.
A lot of mattress retailers will remove your old mattress when they deliver your new one, as it is part of their service. Again, the mattress will probably just end up on a landfill site if it is in too poor a quality to recycle or clean up and resell. If no such service is offered, then they will be able to offer you advice on how to dispose of your mattress, and maybe give you the telephone numbers of some services that you can contact.
Depending on how old your mattress is, and how damaged it is, you might be able to reuse it. 70% of the mattresses in circulation in the UK have been passed down from a previous generation. If you’ve replaced your mattress because you’ve bought a new memory foam mattress, your old one might still be useable, and you can pass it on to someone who would get some good use out of it.
