The company, which is based on the Landmann Way industrial estate adjacent to the South East London Combined Heat Power (SELCHP) plant, claims that currently the majority of mattresses are either landfilled or shredded for the metal and then incinerated.
The company decided to launch the venture following an influx of mattresses to its waste transfer station, which saw HTL handling up to 400 mattresses-a-day without an outlet to recycle them.
After nine months of trialling schemes to recycle the material, Matt:UK is now in talks with local authorities and organisations – such as the London Community Recycling Network – to dispose of mattresses.
And, the company also intends to move to a dedicated site 200 yards from the Landmann Way site once it has sufficient supply of mattresses.
Ray Bagnall, director at Matt:UK, said: “What we have done is a little bit of homework and looked at everything and what it would entail and worked out where everything goes. We were seeing how long it took to get mattresses open and we got eight tonnes of metal on an arctic lorry and now that may not sound like much but that is eight tonnes that was going straight to landfill.”
Process
Under the Matt:UK process, mattresses are hand-shredded using a bespoke table, which allows the them to be spun while they are opened with a specialist cutting tool. The fabric material is then separated from the metal into piles of foam, felt, cotton and polyester.
The material is then washed in an industrial washing machine at 40 degrees to remove any mites from the fabric. The company is also looking at putting the mattresses through an industrial washer first, and cutting them open after.
The metal is then sold to EMR for reprocessing, while the cotton, polyester and felt are baled and shipped to local outlets as well as India and Pakistan. The foam can be reused in insulation, while the felt, cotton and polyester can be reused in other textile applications.
Matt: UK has been established as one of a number of HTL subsidiaries recycling a specific material, which includes a mixed rigid plastics recycling division called Plasticus and wood recycling operation called Metropolitan Wood.
Currently there are few outlets for recycling mattresses in the UK. In 2008, mattress manufacturer Dreams introduced millions of pounds worth of technology at its West Midlands plant in 2008 to shred and crush returned mattresses and recycle wooden bed frames (see letsrecycle.com story).
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