Stettler and area residents now have somewhere to dump their unwanted, old mattresses.
Stettler Waste Management Authority (SWMA) held a grand opening for its mattress recycling centre at the waste transfer site on June 5.
“Mattresses are a really big filler of a land fill, they don’t compress,” said Grace Fix from the SWMA. “The average mattress takes two cubic metres of land fill space and it doesn’t compress so it just really fills up a landfill quickly.”
The centre accepts mattresses, box springs, foam mattresses, electric beds, futons and foam underlay. The mattresses are sent to Calgary where the parts are separated and the wood, metal, foam and fabric are sent to local manufacturers to be made into new products.
Stettler area residents throw out about 500 mattresses every year so this program will save 1,000 cubic metres of landfill space annually. Building and closing a landfill costs about $14 cubic metres, which translates to $28 per mattress.
