The average life of your mattress is about ten years which means that for each decade of your life a mattress disposition decision has most likely been made. That decision may well have been to keep on using the mattress as it really isn't that bad yet, or it could be replacement of that bed set with a newer, cleaner, larger or more back supportive bed set that lets you sleep better. These may be in family decisions such as moving up from crib to accepting the older sibling's hand-me-down or even a thrift store purchase. There are other options as well to include buying brand new bed sets. Sometimes mattress disposition decisions are necessitated by environmental conditions such as bed bugs, water damage or other physical damage to the mattress.

Every year, tons of good material that could be recycled are not, and thus end up clogging our already overwhelmed dumps, waterways and roadsides. Most people think it's a difficult and expensive to recycle their mattresses, bed springs or similar stuffed furniture. While this assumption may currently be true in your locale, in behooves all of us to know of the mattress recycling efforts underway to change this situation. After all, you do care about the environment - don't you?

To eliminate mattress illegal roadside dumping and keep mattresses, box springs and similar stuffed furniture out of licensed landfill is a cultural problem best addressed at the community or higher level similarly to how tire recycling is already being addressed.

Your undertaking to organize a mattress recycling center in your home is not financially prudent as you only have a need once every ten years or so for each of the beds in your home. However, with some creativity and commitment, and a lot of political savvy, your community should be able to organize a community level mattress recycling program for everyone who lives there. This may be easy to do if your community mattress collection point is the local landfill or if the community already has recycling centers and/or programs in-place.

Your community may desire to borrow the Biblical "What goes around, comes around" approach, by identifying and legislating that the very same businesses who sell you mattresses - just like tires - collect a reasonable fee to accept and recycle your old mattress, box springs and similar stuffed furniture.

Once your community identifies one or more convenient places to recycle your old mattress, this will be the turning point in your community to end illegal roadside dumping of eyesore mattresses.

You'll feel better about yourself doing your part to care for the environment as a result, too. Oh yes, and there is one more personal benefit to recycling mattresses which unlike many other recyclables - do hog up a lot of space once they are no longer used - and the number one location in the home where used mattresses eat up your floor space is of course the garage.

Get your family and community actively involved in the mattress recycling process. Make sure they all are aware of that mattresses can now be recycled and the cotton, foam, steel, and other contents made useful again.