SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Mattress Recycling Council (MRC), which operates the Bye Bye Mattress program, has awarded two grants totaling $18,500 to the Highway 59 Landfill and the Billy Wright Landfill, both located in Merced County. The funds will be used to improve conditions to better protect mattresses at the drop-off areas for recycling. Together, these two landfills have collected 22,943 mattresses since joining the Bye Bye Mattress program in 2017. The Highway 59 Landfill is located at 7040 North Highway 59 in Merced, and the Billy Wright Landfill is located at 17173 South Billy Wright Road in Los Banos.
“It’s important to keep mattresses out of the landfills. They’re hard to compact and they take up a lot of space,” said Eric Zetz, Director of the Merced County Regional Waste Management Authority. “A lot of the materials from a mattress can be recycled and reused and this grant money will help protect their integrity and increase their recyclability.”
MRC has awarded more than $300,000 in funding to Bye Bye Mattress collection sites throughout California to fund infrastructure improvements or equipment purchases to increase the recyclability of discarded mattresses and box springs.
“Providing these grants is just one of the ways we continue to work with the more than 200 mattress collection sites throughout California to increase productivity and divert as much material as possible from state landfills,” said Mike O’Donnell, managing director of MRC. “The program serves as a global model for successful mattress recycling and we want to continue that leadership.”
To date, MRC’s Bye Bye Mattress program has recycled more than five million mattresses in California, equating to more than 168 million pounds of material kept out of state landfills. More than 80 percent of a mattress can be recycled and turned into new consumer and industrial products such as carpet padding, mulch, appliances and more
For more information about mattress recycling or to find a collection location or event near you, visit www.ByeByeMattress.com.
The Merced County Association of Governments provides administrative oversight of the Merced County Regional Waste Authority. For more information, visit www.mcagov.org or the Regional Waste Authority page on Facebook at /MCRWMA.