The Mattress Recycling Council's California program achieves 77 percent recycling rate

The Mattress Recycling Council (MRC)'s 2020 annual report shows that despite the disruptions and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, MRC continued to strengthen its California mattress recycling program.

In 2020, MRC's Bye Bye Mattress program achieved a 77.1 percent recycling rate - the highest in the program's history and an improvement of more than 6 percentage points from the previous year. The program recycled more than 1.5 million mattresses and diverted over 64.8 million pounds of material from landfills. 

MRC also worked with local and state leaders to address illegal dumping and took steps to encourage manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their processes and products.

In 2020, MRC focused on adding collection opportunities to rural counties communities experiencing high per capita rates of illegal dumping and underserviced areas. Overall, 98.6 percent of Californians have access to MRC's no-cost collection sites or events, up from 94.8 percent in 2019. Additionally, mattress retailers provide no-cost take back of an old mattress to any consumer that has a new mattress delivered anywhere in the state.

In addition to dedicating over $1 million to its statewide data collection effort known as the Illegally Dumped Mattress Collection Initiative, MRC provided more than $200,000 in funding for prevention and mitigation projects in three especially hard-hit areas.

MRC initiatives such as the Sleep Products Sustainability Program encourage manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their processes and other efforts launching this year will help facilitate information sharing between the mattress industry and recyclers.  

Since the program started in California in 2016, more than 7 million mattresses have been recycled in the state and more than 230 million pounds of materials have been kept out of landfills.