How it all started:
I was dropping off some construction debris at the Lake County dump one day when a truck was dumping a huge load of mattresses at the landfill. I started to think about what materials mattresses and box springs were made of, the wood, recyclable, the steel, recyclable, the cotton, recyclable.
I started making some phone calls to mattress manufacturers in Northeast Ohio, to my surprise and disbelief there was not one company that was being responsible with their waste. I started making some calls to colleges and universities, and again no recycling efforts. So we started to educate companies and colleges on how they could be more sustainable through recycling mattresses rather than landfilling them. There are colleges that are sending thousands of mattresses every year to landfills, all while the materials are 94% recyclable. There are companies that are landfilling tens of thousands of mattresses a year. Why? I am told it is not a priority with our business right now.
Ohio Mattress Recovery and Recycling is working hard torecycle mattresses that would otherwise end up in the local land fill. Mattresses and box springs can take up to 5% of a landfill. Mattresses are 94% recyclable. We are doing our part to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and recycling mattresses from the large companies such as hotel/motels and college/university dorms.
As an environmentally conscious organization Ohio Mattress Recovery and Recycling is also committed to the well being of the community. The company has committed to donate a portion of its net proceeds to benefit local, state, national and international charities.
A proceed of every project is donated back to the school, college, or business of which we do business, another posrtion is donated to a local charity in the community in which we do business.
What Is The Best Type Of Innerspring Mattress?
This article is intended to answer your question about why are there springs in mattresses that need to be recycled? What Is The Best Type Of Innerspring Mattress? Today, there are many different types of innerspring mattresses on the market, so choosing a good quality mattress isn't straightforward. For starters, there are five different types of innerspring designs. Knowing what these are and what materials go into making an innerspring mattress, will help you find the right innerspring mattress for you. Over 90% of mattresses sold are innerspring mattresses. Manufacturers of top rated mattresses like Serta, Jamison and Kingsdown Mattresses all make innerspring mattresses. So, there's a range of good quality innerspring mattresses to choose from. Two good methods to determining quality is to ask the sales assistant and by looking at the mattress cutaway sample of the mattress - each mattress manufacturer provides its retailers with a cross-section sample as a guide for potential customers. Okay, so you're looking at the cutaway, but what exactly are you looking at? Quality innerspring (called coils) are usually tempered with heat or electricity. Doing this makes the coils more likely to return to their original shape. Most quality coils are coated with plastic to resist corrosion and wear. Generally, the thicker the metal, the firmer the support and the longer the coils will last. The higher the gauge number, the thinner the wire. Most quality mattress manufacturers like Kingsdown use a 13 gauge wire. There are five different types of coil systems used in mattresses: Continuous, Karr, Marshall, Knotted Bonnell and Knotted Offset. A continuous coil system is fashioned from a single strand of steel wire strung throughout the system. This system gives a mattress a lot of strength. The Karr systems consists hour-glass shaped coils with the end left unknotted. The main advantage of Karr coils is that each coil moves independently. The Marshall system uses very light wire. This is because this system uses a lot of coils. This system is prohibitively expensive and is rarely used in mattresses made today. The knotted Bonnel system, like the Karr, consists of hour-glass shaped coils, but each coil has five turns. The Knotted offset is similar to the Bonnell but the difference comes in that part of the top and bottom wire sections are squared off to fit together in a parallel fashion on the top surface. This helps prevents the mattress from sagging. Coil count is not necessarily a good indication that one mattress is better than another. Stearns and Foster make some of the finest mattresses on the market today but typically use less coils than other leading mattress manufacturers. However, most quality mattresses use somewhere between 700 and 1000 coils. Just about all the major mattress manufacturers now apply a soft top to their innerspring mattresses. This top layer can consist of upholstery, latex or memory foam. This layer can be 1 to 3 inches thick. It is this top layer that gives an innerspring mattress its soft feel, while the coils below give the support. One final point: when you lie down or sit on a mattress you shouldn't feel any coils. A quality mattress from a leading mattress manufacturer like Kingsdown should feel firm but giving and should give your spine, pelvis and shoulders the support they need in order for you to get a good night's sleep. Visit bestchoicemattress.com for mattress reviews on the Jamison mattress or the Kingsdown mattress and other quality mattresses. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robin_O'Brien Cotton And Its End Products This article is intended to answer your question about what are the uses of the cotton recovered from mattress recycling. Cotton continues to be the number one fibre in the world today. The demand for cotton product rises to manifold during the summer season. Fabric can also be made from recycled or recovered cotton that would otherwise be thrown away during the spinning, weaving or cutting process. While many fabrics are made completely of cotton, some materials blend cotton with other fibers. Cotton linters are fine, silky fibers which adhere to the seeds of the cotton plant after ginning. These curly fibers are typically less than 1/8in, 3mm long. The term may also apply to the longer textile fiber staple lint as well as the shorter fuzzy fibers from some upland species. Linters are traditionally used in the manufacture of paper and as a raw material in the manufacture of cellulose. The cottonseed which remains after the cotton is ginned is used to produce cottonseed oil, which after refining can be consumed by humans like any other vegetable oil. The cottonseed meal that is left is generally fed to livestock. In the past, cotton seeds were used as an abortifacient, that is, a folk remedy to provoke abortion. Shiny cotton is a processed version of the fibre that can be made into cloth resembling satin for shirts and suits. However, its hydrophobic property of not easily taking up water makes it unfit for the purpose of bath and dish towels (although examples of these made from shiny cotton are seen. Cotton continues to be the wonder fibre amongst all other fibres. In Cotton trade has helped US to become the world leader. http://YarnsandFibers.com is the largest textile portal online, trading in all types of yarns and fibers. Members from 10,000 companies over 150 countries. If you are surfing the net for potential buyers and suppliers of textile products then visit today. Get free trial membership and calls from prospective customers/sellers within days!!! Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Mantford Mattresses and bedsprings may never fit into a recycling container, but efforts are under way to try to make the unwieldy home furnishings the latest items subject to recycling. There is a pressing need to figure out what to do with old mattresses. Not only are they a nuisance for homeowners to dispose of, but hundreds of thousands of them end up in dumps each year, creating a headache for municipalities. Those involved in recycling say it's a major waste of resources to toss mattresses into dumps because close to 100 per cent of the material in them -- ranging from the steel in their coils to the cotton in their padding -- can be recycled. The only hitch is that the value of the salvaged material doesn't come close to the approximate cost -- $10 per mattress -- needed for disassembly. Canadian mattress retailers, Sleep Country Canada, has recently begun recycling old mattresses it collects when delivering new ones to customers in Quebec and Ontario. Sleep Country has had a long-standing practice of giving to charities some of the more lightly used mattresses it collects. But most old mattresses aren't up to the rigors of accepting new sleepers. The company wanted to avoid throwing them into the garbage, so it hit upon recycling. "It was a conscious effort to divert as much as we can that goes to the landfill," said Christine Magee, Sleep Country president. The retailer expects to recycle about 60,000 mattresses and box springs a year in Ontario, and give about 30,000 to charity. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
By Robin O'Brien
http://EzineArticles.com/?What-Is-The-Best-Type-Of-Innerspring-Mattress?&id=493425
http://EzineArticles.com/?Cotton-And-Its-End-Products&id=548776Canada awakes to idea of mattress recycling
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 14:51.