Its lifespan is between five and ten years on average, or between 1,825 and 3,650 more or less restless nights. After that, our good old mattress is good for retirement, heading to the “waste” box. Every year in France, around five million mattresses go into the trash. An enormous deposit which until now has not been exploited with mattresses which ended their lives buried underground, incinerated or abandoned in the wilderness. But since 2013, and the establishment of an eco-participation on furniture products, things have changed with the emergence of a real sector which now recycles and valorizes 97% of the components of a mattress use. “The remaining 3% are either mattresses that are too soiled or old-fashioned mattresses made of wool or horsehair,” underlines Ludovic Blot, general manager of Ressources T.
Actor for more than thirty years in the circular and social economy in Brittany, the cooperative group has just inaugurated on Monday, in partnership with the eco-organization Ecomaison and the Veolia group, its new mattress sorting and recovery unit in La Mézière north of Rennes. A site, the seventh of its kind in France, which receives hundreds of used mattresses from all over Brittany every day. “In the order of 150,000 per year, or 2,000 tonnes, and we intend to ramp up to reach 300,000 mattresses per year,” specifies Ludovic Blot.
Foam reused to make new mattresses
Once collected from recycling centers or manufacturers, the old mattresses will be stripped of their covers then dismantled piece by piece on production lines. State-of-the-art machines separate spring mattresses from foam or latex mattresses. Each component is then grouped and sent to partner companies responsible for their recovery.
The springs thus go to a metal recycling company while the polyurethane foam will be transformed into liquid or recycled to make new mattresses or insulating panels. “There are currently fewer outlets for latex but it is still used to produce mattresses for cows or coverings for play areas,” indicates Dominique Mignon, president of Ecomaison.
“Still plenty of opportunities to build”
A good third of mattress waste, particularly textiles, will go to energy recovery. Burned, they will serve as solid recovery fuels, mainly for cement manufacturers. “The recycling sector is in constant motion and there are still plenty of opportunities to build,” estimates Edwige Mansier, deputy general director of Ressources T.
Operating as a “demanufacturing factory”, the La Mézière site also serves as a laboratory for the teams. In a small corner of the vast workshop, polyester fiber cushions were produced from old cushions. “We will continue the approach on textile decoration such as carpets or curtains,” explains Dominique Mignon. Because we are now in an era where nothing is lost and everything is transformed. »