My whole life, I've been someone who when I throw something away thought that when it goes out of sight and out of my mind -- that it is gone forever... Are you that way too?

This year, I gave myself a great reality check called a field trip, I took myself to my city's landfill and that opened my eyes for the first time to see the number of mattresses and other stuffed furniture being brought to the landfill. In my city, there are about 300 mattresses a day going into the landfill. "May they rest in peace and enjoy an eternal sleep," you say. Not me, I wanted to know more. Seems like everyone likes to compare the volume of mattresses to the size of Rhode Island or some giant sports venue. Me, I really can not relate to the size of Rhode Island nor filling up an entire sports complex with dumped mattresses - what I can deal with is the size of 5000 square foot house. At the rate my city dumps mattresses into the landfill, that's about the equivalent volume of a house a week.

Growing up images of the Earth covered in mattress over-flowing landfills, piles and piles of garbage stacked as high as our tallest building was not part of my childhood experience. Now with our enlightened generations the idea of leaving too much waste for the Earth to handle is a bitter reality today. So, I've begun to educate myself - especially about mattress recycling..

I guess I've always thought of using credit cards as not being real money, that's the same way I viewed trash disposal. I know I've read about landfills becoming full and how that will cause a trash disposal problem, but until I took myself out to the landfill site itself, I still had this childish idea that once I put something into the trash can or on the curb, it just went - away.

Seeing, with my own eyes, the area designated for my community's left overs was like a big slap of reality. I was finally able to comprehend the thought; "if I'm not the only one throwing things away carelessly, and if others are doing it too, this landfill space will not last very long."

I was surprised at some of the items I saw at the town's landfill, too. There was discarded furniture that, being somewhat creative, I could see would make a nice trash-to-treasures piece with lots of service life remaining. Maybe these refurbished items could be the one piece that brought the feel of a room together, that completed what the room is to feel like and express. Instead, someone tossed them out and they were taking up (a whole lot) of space in my city's landfill.

I was shocked at the number of mattress springs I saw snarling their way above the surface of the landfill and when I asked one of the operators if those springs caused landfill machinery problems - well, I thought I was at the seashore listening to a sailor swear. I got the point about how much trouble mattresses cause in landfills and how much space they take up.

When I arrived back at home, I jumped on the Internet and searched for mattress recycling. There was some in California and Minnesota and a bit here and there. Nothing near me. How disappointing to know my only personal option was to send my old mattress to the landfill just like everyone else and squander the valuable landfill space instead of sending its springs and cotton and felt and foam back to manufacturers who would reuse them.

Well, determined as I was to recycle my old mattress, I went search page after search page and finally ran across the site with the Spring Compactor Invention on it. Ah! It was nice to know somebody was trying to make mattresses recyclable almost everywhere. So, maybe next year's field trip will be to my city's new mattress recycling facility. Care to join me? Maybe we could visit yours?