Soft Landing brings new life to unwanted mattresses
In Australia, around 1.8 million mattresses end up in landfill each year.
Soft Landing, a national social enterprise that operates in Hume, repurpose unwanted mattresses and ensemble bases.
This keeps valuable materials in circulation, rather than sending them to landfill. It also creates local jobs, particularly for people experiencing barriers to employment.
The challenge
“Mattresses are made of many different materials including steel, timber, foam and textiles. This makes recycling more challenging as the materials must be separated before they can be recovered and repurposed,” said Kylie Roberts-Frost, ACT Manager, Soft Landing.
“If a mattress is sent to landfill it takes up large amounts of space, and these valuable resources are wasted.
“Mattresses are also often illegally dumped, which contaminates local environments.
“At Soft Landing we saw a significant landfill and environmental problem that needed a solution. We are tackling this problem, one mattress at a time.
The action
“We divert mattresses from landfill and split them into their individual components. This means a ‘second life’ for many of the mattress elements.
“The foam and latex we recover is used by Dunlop Flooring to create new carpet underlay.
“For the steel springs, we work with various recyclers nationally who process them to create clean Australian green steel, which could potentially end up as another set of mattress springs!
“We were originally sending the timber bases to a recycler to be turned into mulch, but we’ve just recently started trials with Hybrid Sleep. They’ve been providing beds to charities and welfare organisations in Victoria for the past five years. We send them timber bed bases, which they reprocess and renew. This is an amazing opportunity to have a truly circular use of the bases, which we’re thrilled about and can’t wait to see the first results.
“The manual deconstruction process requires a lot of people to physically separate the mattress components. We saw this as an opportunity for Soft Landing to help the community by creating jobs for those who traditionally struggle with normal employment pathways.
“We are incredibly proud that over 90 per cent of our employees working on our site (right up to our management team) have come to us from a challenging background. We partner with organisations like ACT Corrections to get people back into the workforce.
“This year we also started working with disabilities providers, such as Work4Ability and The Personnel Group.
The benefit
“During 2021-22 we collected and recycled 47,513 mattresses in the ACT. Through our operations we recycle up to 75 per cent of all mattress components. We are consistently working with manufacturers, retailers and researchers to try and find the best ways to continue the useful life of mattresses.
“Beyond the environmental benefits, we create jobs that care for people and planet. We keep waste out of landfill and provide community service to those who need it most.
“The benefits of providing stable employment to people who have been out of the workforce for a long time has huge flow on effects for the whole community – not just for themselves but their families, the people around them and their neighbourhoods.
“The circular economy is one of the core drivers for what we’re trying to do at Soft Landing in Hume. Everyone from manufacturers to retailers to consumers and recyclers must join the conversation and be active in changing the way our society uses ‘stuff’. We need to focus on reduce and reuse. No one part of that chain can solve the problem on their own. We must work together, with governments and industry bodies to drive a circular economy.
“Looking at the thousands of mattresses we see come through our site each year and knowing they will become hundreds of tonnes of steel products, thousands of metres of carpet underlay and potentially hundreds of beds for social housing and charitable organisations, that’s really uplifting. And we’ve given jobs to 30 Canberrans to do it. I can’t help but feel really positive and excited about how much further we could take this.”
The Circular Economy
Soft Landing is an example of the circular economy in action. A circular economy ensures that materials and resources are captured and recirculated, adding value to products that were previously considered waste. This process generates economic opportunities, creating local jobs while designing out waste.
Learn more about the draft ACT Circular Economy Strategy.
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as traditional custodians of the ACT and recognise any other people or families with connection to the lands of the ACT and region. We acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.