New Recycling Plant in Telford

Environmental consultancy JBS Recovery has invested £500,000 into the first of 10 dedicated mattress recycling facilities it plans to open as it aims to divert over a million mattresses from landfill by 2012.

The new facility at Stafford Park in Telford, Shropshire, enables mattresses to be split down into five separate components: fabric, polyurethane foam, metal springs, flock, and the base. Each of the first four components is fully recyclable, and although the base – usually comprising of some form of coconut matting – cannot be recycled because it is so low-grade, the material can still be used to generate energy from waste by the process of anaerobic digestion, eliminating the need to send any part of the mattress to landfill.

The Shropshire-based company has already recycled 180,000 mattresses since it started recycling them 12 months ago.

John Neill, director of JBS Fibre Recovery, said: “This fantastic new facility gives us the additional capacity to work alongside stakeholders including Wolverhampton city council, Telford and Wrekin council, major retailers such as John Lewis, bed manufacturing companies, and the general public to significantly slash waste and reduce our dependence on sending materials to landfill.”