(Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission)

By rdnewsNOW staff

For The Benefit Of Landfills

Partnership leads to mattress recycling program at Lacombe County landfills

Oct 6, 2020 | 4:42 PM

Lacombe County area landfills stand to benefit from a new mattress recycling program announced on Tuesday.

Officials with the Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission (LRWSC) say the program is made possible with the help of a $36,500 grant from Dow Canada.

Launching Oct. 19, the program aims to divert mattresses from local landfills, allowing them to be recycled.

“Mattresses take up valuable landfill space because they aren’t able to be compacted and often get tangled up in landfill equipment,” explained Jay Hohn, LRWSC Commission Manager, in a press release. “Recycling the mattresses is a great diversionary tactic employed by the commission, and we are very appreciative of Dow Canada to fund the one-year pilot project to get us started fully.”

“At Dow, we’re passionate about creating sustainable solutions in the communities where we operate,” said Srikanta Hazra, Dow Prentiss Site Director. “We’re looking forward to collaborating with the County and the Waste Services Commission to prevent mattresses from ending up in the local landfills.”

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Over the next year, LRWSC will set up collection bins at all sites, and construct a building at the Prentiss Landfill facility to house the mattresses.

During the pilot project, the mattresses will be collected for free. They will be shipped to a Calgary facility, where they will be dismantled and recycled for a fee, covered for the first year of Dow Canada’s grant.

Instead of decomposing for over 80 years in a landfill, the collected mattress materials will be transformed into new materials for new products.

“Because of their bulky nature, mattresses take up valuable space in local landfills, and will shorten the lifespan of these facilities,” said Hohn, adding that each year, approximately 1,000 are discarded at LRWSC transfer stations.

During the one-year pilot project, LRWSC and Lacombe County will look for opportunities to partner with other organizations to ensure long-term financial arrangements are in place or develop a user-pay system for mattress recycling.

Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission owns and operates five solid waste management facilities within Lacombe County boundaries. They have transfer sites at or near Eckville, Bentley, Alix/Mirror, Spruceville, and a transfer site and class 3 landfill at its Prentiss location.