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SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Somerville has launched a new mattress recycling program designed to breathe new life into the city's spent beds. The program will take mattresses and box springs that would ordinarily head for the trash heap and process them into new materials to be used in other places.
The state says some 600,000 box springs and mattresses are thrown out in Massachusetts every year. Fabric and foam from the mattresses will be turned into textiles and more foam, wood will be processed into mulch, and scrap metal will be reused.
The program is being run free of charge, thanks in part to a federal EPA grant of about $46,000 to offset the city's costs. Somerville is contracting with a mattress recycling firm, Green Mattress Recycling, to run the reprocessing.
This program gives the city a head start on meeting new state requirements that cities and towns have mattress and box spring recycling in place by this November. The state said mattresses have been made a priority for recycling because they're difficult to handle and take up a lot of space in landfills.
WBZ's James Rojas (@JamesRojasNews) reports:
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