New recycling scheme proposed after 1,000 mattresses dumped in Derry inside a month

Derry's council is considering a new recycling scheme after it emerged that 1,000 mattresses were dumped at a local recycling centre in just over a month.

The information came to light at a recent meeting of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Environment and Regeneration Committee, where details emerged of a potential mattress recycling scheme being considered by council.

The meeting was told that Belfast City Council is already running a successful mattress recycling scheme, which has resulted in the creation of nine full-time jobs.

It been proposed to run a six month pilot scheme in the local council district with mattresses being collected at Pennyburn Household Recycling Centre and Strahans Road in Strabane.

As part of that initial scheme, council officers were asked to begin monitoring the number of mattresses coming into the sites to determine feasibility of the scheme.

It’s now emerged that from February 13 until the end of March, 1,381 mattresses were left at two recycling centres in the council district.

1,000 were collected from the Pennyburn Household Recycling Centre while the remainder were left at the Strabane recycling centre.

It also emerged at the meeting that the council is also lifting an average of 106 mattresses a week as part of its bulky waste collections.

Any mattresses being brought to council facilities are sent to landfill.

A report brought before the meeting said that Belfast City Council had tried to source reputable contractors to divert mattresses from landfill, with little success due to the material within the mattresses being too difficult for contractors to manage.

The meeting was told that while mattresses are ‘relatively light’ in comparison to their size, they are ‘difficult to compress effectively’.

Following on from an initial trial, Belfast City Council  put a process in place to standardise the collection and treatment process.

Householders can deposit mattresses at one of Belfast council’s four household recycling centres, where staff direct residents to a specific covered container on site, which ensures that the mattresses are kept dry and free from contamination.

The mattresses are then collected by Ulster Supported Employment Limited (USEL), a social enterprise created to assist people with disabilities and health-related conditions into employment.

The mattresses are then transported to USEL’S facility in Cambria Street in North Belfast for de-construction where the mattresses are separated by size and quality.

They are then processed through a production line to deconstruct the materials and elements within the mattress. Each recovered material is then stored and bulked to enable a cost effective onward transportation to a broker or re-processor, or for a proportion of the output, landfill.

The first full year of operations ended in October 2016 during which time USEL collected and treated 8,100 mattresses.

Nine full-time jobs have also been created as a result of the scheme, with 158 tonnes diverted from landfill, and 94 per cent landfill diversion.

Councillors were told at the meeting that there would be costs associated with the trial scheme, which will be included in an updated report of the proposal set to come before a future meeting of the same committee.