Do all good mattresses go to heaven when they die?

In just one day at a local landfill, more than 300 old mattresses and box springs arrive for burial, but many communities are no longer accepting used mattresses in landfills, or are charging hefty fees for their disposal. The recycling of these items seems to be a ripe business opportunity for the savvy entrepreneur.

So... you're getting a new bed and mattress today. How do you go about disposing of your old one? Unfortunately, you don't have many options, as the market for re-using and recycling mattresses is very small.
Mattresses actually have a lot of recyclable materials in them. Each one is on average a 23 cubic-foot assemblage of polyurethane foam, steel, cotton and wood.

The International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) indicated that for the year of 2006, U.S. producers shipped 43 million mattress and foundation units, with total industry shipments valued at about $6 billion. In Minnesota alone, 67,300 mattresses are deposited for burial in the region’s landfills each year.
Manufacturers construct mattresses very tightly so they won't come apart easily, which is great, until you try to recycle them. To separate the components for recycling, mattresses can be "filleted" (an actual industry term) manually with a box-cutter, which takes a fair amount of time and energy. Or they can be shredded, which requires expensive equipment.
A standard mattress and box spring consist primarily of steel, polyurethane foam, cotton and other fabric, and wood. Good recycling markets usually exist for the steel, and markets could also likely be found for the foam. Because of the condition of the fabric and wood that comes out of old mattresses and box springs, those materials currently have few reliable markets.

The value of the recycled materials alone will not cover the costs of mattress recycling. However, mattress recycling may make sense financially as an alternative to landfills, if you take into account the true costs of land filling, according to a report by the ISPA's Mattress Disposal Task Force.
The usual procedure for mattress recycling is as follows:

    * After transport to the dismantling facility, your mattress or box spring is fed into a machine that pulls apart and slices away the soft materials on the top and bottom, separating the foam and cotton fiber from the steel and wood framework.
    * The foam, fiber, wood, and steel are bailed and made ready for a journey back into the manufacturing of new goods. If you’ve seen carpet padding made of chopped up multi colored foam, then you’ve seen one of the many products that are made from materials recycled from beds like yours.

What’s the secret to starting and sustaining a successful mattress recycling business? Check the approach taken by some entrepreneurs already getting into this not yet crowded niche.