Most people wonder what the most sustainable, environmentally or eco-friendly mattress is. There is no simple answer to that. Our extensive experience in mattress recycling teaches us that we need to go back all the way to the design stage and address those components that have proven to be the most problematic at the end-of-life, to work towards more sustainable bedding products.

There is no such thing as the “most sustainable mattress”. This is the result of the inherent complexity in the word sustainable itself. What does it actually mean? There are mixed Whenever we extract resources to make something, for which there is no real avenue of recycling in an infinite loop, can a product be genuinely sustainable? One would argue that a mattress in itself is a sustainable product, because the average lifespan is anywhere between 7 to 10 years. However, when you do the maths that means on average Australians dispose close to 3 million old mattresses annually. The mere scale of this waste problem is incomprehensible. The majority of these go to landfill, a part of them is recycled - although whether downcycling components into industries which produce products of lower value could be considered recycling rather than downcycling is questionable at best – and a part is incinerated. Not an ideal situation.

To answer the question how we can create a more sustainable mattress, warrants us to assess which critical design flaws and materials have proven to be most problematic. Take polyurethane foam for example, a versatile, soft and comfortable material that has been advanced and developed into various strengths, flexibilities and with a wide variety of performance attributes. Scoping the mattress landscape, one will find a range of terminologies ranging from comfort layer to gel infused memory foam. Opening your average mattress, it is pretty much unimaginable that it will not contain some type of foam, whether that will be polyurethane (in cheaper varieties) or natural latex foam (in more expensive varieties). With the wide use of the material, one could hardly imagine this to be one of the most problematic ones due to the lack of viable avenues to recycle this material at equal or similar value. Foam is often downcycled into carpet underlay, bonded foam or other building materials, which are later destined for landfill, only postponing the inevitable waste issue. Due to the lack of scaled innovation in recycling of polyurethane or latex foam, this material poses a significant threat to the ability to thoroughly recycle mattresses. On a mission to phase out foam, Social Living is destined to find a suitable replacement material for which recycling avenues are much better developed.  

This brings us to the next major hurdle, the complexity of design and the overuse of different materials. Somehow, the idea has nested itself into the Australian landscape that a mattress has to be very high or thick, as it represents a type of luxury. We have seen mattresses as high as 30 centimetres. This leads manufacturers down a spiral of overindulgence in materials. This consumes significantly more resources than necessary, while adding little to the overall comfort. Looking at some of the leading manufacturers in Europe, it has been proven that no such thickness is needed to achieve genuine comfort. Additionally, if all manufacturers use many different types of layers. In their mattresses, which they believe all have some different type of performance aspects, the end-of-life handling of these products becomes even more complicated. Not even to speak about the glues and adhesives used to hold all of the different layers together, which may contaminate the components and inhibit recycling of them altogether. Simplification is key to reduce the burden on end-of-life recycling facilities. Manufacturers need to take responsibility for the products they put in the market and rethink design, so that they know the components they include don’t just lead to perceived comfort, but also contribute to the ability of consumers to responsibility dispose of their product at the end of its useful life.

Another trend in the textile space is to use blended or combined fabrics or novel materials in the mattress covers, ticking, borders, bottoms or quilted panels. Although manufacturers may achieve certain performance benefits from this method. Is does again make recycling significantly more complicated. Moreover, if a manufacturer chooses to use a material that is different from the ones used in the filling once again, more avenues are needed for recycling, than if one chooses to stick to one or two different fibrous materials only. As of today, no technology has advanced enough at scale to be able to separate blended textiles. Furthermore, while novel materials may be interesting from a sustainability and impact reduction publicity point of view, from a waste perspective they appear challenging. Why resort to a partially plant-based product, rather than a fully polyester one, if polyester recycling mechanism are that much more advanced and blended textile only contribute to the risk of contaminating existing recycling streams.  

Some lessons we have learned from operating our own recycling facility is that foam is a critical material to be re-evaluated and phased out by the market, unless technologies to clean, recycle or reuse foams are scaled within due course. Mattress designers need to focus on simplifying a product so that it can easily be dissembled, and the different components can easily be recognized and channelled towards the correct recycling channels. Using as little as possible different raw materials, for which end-of-life strategies are adequately in place and if possible, even internalized is thus key. At last, reducing the need for glues and adhesives, not only positively impacts one’s environmental footprint through reduced chemical use, but also contributes to low- toxicity of the final product and strengthens the ability to recycle the different mattress components. Finding alternative ways to bind or connect different layers or reducing the need for different layers altogether is critical. Consequently, manufacturers may get closer to becoming if not “the most”, but one of the “more sustainable mattresses”.