The industry faces a pivotal choice
‘Every year in the UK 6.8million mattresses reach end-of-life. Most people assume they’re recycled. They’re not. At best, they are partially processed: steel is recovered, while the majority of materials are lost to energy recovery, low-grade reuse or landfill. The industry calls it recycling, but it isn’t circular,’ says Paul Beckett, Reborn director.
‘But it doesn’t have to be like this. The current model is built for throughput, not material recovery. Shredding enables speed and volume but destroys valuable components. Manual dismantling preserves materials such as foam, fibres and spring units, but the infrastructure and end markets are lacking to scale up.
‘Just 660,000 mattresses are genuinely recycled into new products and more than 53,000tonnes of material still end up in energy recovery, downcycling or landfill.’
Reborn works with manufacturers to take back end-of-life mattresses, recover reusable components and remanufacture them into new materials and finished products, including mattresses, divans, ottomans and pet beds.
‘Alongside this inefficiency, a more complex issue is emerging. Recovered components – particularly spring units – are being reintroduced into new mattresses without declaration. This creates a grey area where recycled content is not disclosed, products are sold as fully new, and manufacturers lose control of their own materials.
‘Manual recyclers can achieve significantly higher returns selling recovered components than through traditional recycling routes. This has unintentionally created a parallel supply chain: one that operates outside formal declaration and verification.
‘If the industry is to move forward, it must stop treating mattresses as waste. But a new model is beginning to emerge: one that shifts responsibility back to the manufacturer. Instead of outsourcing end-of-life to third parties, manufacturers can recover materials from their own products, remanufacture components into new inputs and reintroduce them into their own product lines: all within a fully traceable and declared system.’ Beckett outlines his vision of circularity. ‘Textiles are reprocessed into engineered
non-wovens suitable for comfort layers, insulation and upholstery; foam is re-bonded into new foam products and used in mattresses, furniture, gym equipment and underlay, and spring systems are extracted, tested and reused.
‘The mattress industry now faces a clear choice: continue allowing recovered components to flow into an undeclared grey market: reducing landfill but increasing risk, or establish a transparent, regulated circular system, solving landfill, compliance and trust simultaneously. The mattress industry doesn’t have a recycling problem: it has a system design problem. Fix the system and the materials follow.’
