A Tottenham business has sprung into action rather than rolling over on a serious environment issue facing the sleep industry.
TIC Group’s managing director of mattress recycling, Michael Warren, said the business is now set up to recycle every mattress disposed of each year in Victoria, putting in Australia’s first automated mattress recycling plant.
“At the moment, in excess of one million mattresses end up in landfill in Australia every year … if these mattresses were stacked on top of each other, they’d reach the international space station,” Mr Warren said.
TIC recycles 2000 mattresses per week, he said, about 100,000 per year.
“But we have the capacity to do far more.”
TIC works with about 40 per cent of Victorian councils, collecting mattresses left out for hard waste collection. But Mr Warren wants stricter controls on mattresses still going to landfill.
“The state government and councils need a ban on mattresses going into landfill,” he said. “We have just succeeded to tender with Maribyrnong, but clearly there are other councils we would also like to work with.”
Based on Dutch technology, the automated process means a mattress can be recycled in 40 seconds. Coverings and foam are removed to create carpet underlay, while metal from the springs is shredded and melted down.
The state government provided a $250,000 grant to help build the new plant, officially opened by energy, environment and climate change minister Lily D’Ambrosio last Friday.
