ENVIRONMENTALISTS have hailed the success of a mattress collection scheme by Tipperary County Council which sees the dumped material being repurposed by a firm in Co Longford.
Over 500,000 mattresses are discarded each year in Ireland through fly tipping and illegal dumping – so many they could fill Croke Park three or four times over.
RTÉ’s new climate change series Heated recently showed how Co Longford firm Cirtex is recycling the material into repurposed new mattress fillings and material for other uses.
The mattresses are broken into component parts, with the steel springs recycled and the polyester coverings shredded, de-contaminated though a 180 degree incinerator process, and the padding is then re-used for the furniture and bedding industry.
The company explained how it had an agreement with Tipperary County Council which safely stores any mattresses it can save, for transportation to the Longford factory.
Cork County Council told The Southern Star that it has 12 civic amenity waste and recycling sites where mattresses are collected are stored ‘as space and facility constraints on each site allow’.
Some mattresses are sent for recycling, all are ‘only removed from our sites by licensed waste collectors for further processing’.
However, it didn’t respond to a query regarding what happens to mattresses dumped illegally in the county.
