Expansion plans for mattress recycling company

Shropshire-based JBS Fibre Recovery Ltd – which is part of the JBS Group which also includes JBS Waste Management – opened its first mattress recycling facility earlier this year in Telford (see letsrecycle.com story). And, over the last three months, the company says it has recycled 14,000 mattresses at the site, diverting 600 tonnes of waste from landfill. It counts the likes of the John Lewis Partnership, IKEA and local authorities among its customers.

Now, the company has opened another mattress recycling centre in Milton Keynes with the capacity to handle 300,000 mattresses a year and is planning to open another in Bradford in October, followed by even more plants in future months.

John Neill, director of JBS Fibre Recovery Ltd, explained: We are absolutely delighted with our recent round of successes. Thanks to our Telford centre, over 600 tonnes of waste have already been diverted from landfill in the last three months, an achievement that surpassed even our own high expectations. The massive growth of the Telford site highlighted the need for a much greater number of dedicated mattress recycling plants across the country, and urged us to bring forward our plans for new regional hubs UK-wide.

The opening of the new centre in Milton Keynes last month is just the start of our plans, in fact we have a further centre opening in Bradford in October, with even more facilities coming online in future months.

Disposed

It is estimated in the UK over six million mattresses are disposed of per year with the figure in the USA exceeding 30 million.

Many recycling centres are unable to process waste mattresses because they are made from a range of components including metal, fabrics, and foam, meaning that they are often sent to landfill.

JBS Fibre Recovery Ltds claims to recycle, reuse or send to energy recovery all materials extracted from the mattresses it handles. It claims that many other companies which offer a mattress recycling service only achieve a recovery rate of less than 46%.

Mr Neill said: Despite the difficulties that are often involved in recycling mattresses, they are still being produced at a rapid rate the National Bed Federation estimates that approximately two million mattresses are manufactured every year. Its our mission to divert over a million mattresses from landfill by 2012, and, based on our recent success and subsequent need for massive expansion, we are well on track to achieving this.