Western Placer WMA joins Bye Bye Mattress collection program

The Western Placer Waste Management Authority (WPWMA) located in Placer County, California, has joined a growing list of participants in the Alexandria, Virginia-based Mattress Recycling Council (MRC)’s Bye Bye Mattress collection program.

“At the WPWMA, we continuously strive to make recycling and disposal easier for our community, and partnering with Bye Bye Mattress will certainly do that,” WPWMA Executive Director Ken Grehm says. “When the WPWMA hosted free mattress collection events over the past few years, it was met with great enthusiasm, and so we’re thrilled to now offer free mattress drop off at our facility 365 days a year.”

A mattress recycled through the Bye Bye Mattress program is broken up into four main components—steel, foam, fibers and wood­—which are used to make hundreds of new products such as carpet padding, rebar, insulation, filters and mulch.

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Beginning Feb. 1, the WPWMA will accept old mattresses and box springs from the public every day, for free. Residents may bring their items to the WPWMA, located at 3195 Athens Ave., Lincoln, California from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.

The program is funded through a $10.50 recycling fee that is collected when a mattress or box spring is purchased in California. The fee is used to establish free drop-off locations and collection events throughout the state, transport collected units from these sites to companies that dismantle the discarded products and ultimately recycle the materials. Other portions of the fee combat illegal dumping and fund research efforts that improve the recycling process and recyclability of the component material.

“We’re thankful to each of the solid waste facilities, local businesses and nonprofit organizations that join our collection network and help us make recycling used mattresses easier for residents,” MRC’s Managing Director Mike O’Donnell says. “Together, this impressive network is collecting more than 1.5 million mattresses each year that are recycled right here in California.”

In addition to using participating collection sites, residents that are having a new mattress delivered should ask their retailer about taking back their old one.