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BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Starting Tuesday, residents in the Commonwealth will have to think twice before they throw out tattered mattresses, box springs, or old clothes, as new regulations from state officials take effect.
Among the changes the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection issued, residents are no longer allowed to dispose of mattresses and textiles. The reasoning for which, MassDEP says, is to inspire more mattress recycling, as they are typically expensive to transport, hard to fit into said transport, take up large amounts of space, but are made mostly of reusable materials.
Photo: Courtesy of MassDEP.
According to state officials, 75 percent of the components that make up a mattress (steel, fabric, foam, and wood) are recyclable.
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Photo: Courtesy of MassDEP.
Collection services are available via vendors with state contracts, MassDEP provided a list of those businesses here.
Meanwhile for municipalities who enroll in the MassDEP Mattress Recycling Incentive grant program, funding will be provided to aid in collection and the recycling process. In total, MassDEP has spent more than $2 million to support the MRI program, with the average cost of recycling coming out to an average of $19.55 per mattress collected.
The program includes $400,000 in funding for municipalities to purchase storage spaces and $1.7 million on transportation and processing costs.
MassDEP says about 200,000 residential mattresses and box springs are thrown out every year, that number swells to 600,000 a year if you include commercial goods.
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