Who Cares About Raw Cotton In Mattresses?

First: Matress manufacturers care because cotton between your body and the steel inner springs of a mattress has a lot to do with how comfortable you are sleeping on their mattress. That comfort is a benefit that you pay the manufacturer's sales distributor for as it gives you a good night's rest.

Second: You and yours care about the cotton in the mattress as it not only gives you comfort, it actually protects you - in part - from the steel springs which flex in response to your body movements.

Third: The mattress recycler cares about the raw cotton inside your mattress when you discard it. The raw cotton has value - after all others pay in the neighborhood of sixty cents a pound for raw cotton.

On average there are nine pounds of cotton in a mattress. Simple math says that nine times sixty cents yields - on average - $5.40 worth of cotton in each recycled mattress.

Mattress recyclers may well recyle hundreds of mattresses per day, thousands of mattresses per month, and tens or even hunmdreds of thousands per year. That makes cotton sales from mattress recycling a major revenue stream for recyclers in the mattress recycling business.

So, someone told you that there is legislation in-place to prevent pre-used cotton from being made into new clothing. It had something to do with the fire retardants and pesticides for bed bugs and mites applied to the mattresses. Safety should always trump the instant need to make money. This means that mattress recyclers may need to find non-clothing buyers for their raw cotton. And, yes there absolutely are opportunities to do just that. Consider the following examples:

The mattress recycling operation in Duluth, Minnesota provides cotton to a diesel filter manufacturer.

Cotton extracted during the mattress recycling process is well suited for use in absorbent pads for oil spill and other hazardous waste cleanups.

There are paper mills who use up to twenty-four percent cotton in their fine linen products.

Mattress manufacturers are certainly users of raw cotton in their new inner spring mattresses and they should save the costs of fire treating mattress recycled cotton.

Furniture manufacturers use cotton padding in their stuffed chairs, couches and ottomans.

Cotton can be incorporated into insulation to increase energy efficiency in our homes and businesses - especially when it has already been treated for fireproofing.

And, firemen suits use fire proof treated cotton to insulate and protect those men and women fighting fires in our communities.

The point here is that marketing cotton extracted from used mattresses is not only possible, it is limited mainly by our failure to give creative thought to how we will market that cotton source. Dumping raw cotton into a landfill is no longer environmentally acceptable or necessary, and it wastes money.

Cecil Taylor is the Inventor of the Spring Compactor Invention. For further information on Mattress Recycling and the Spring Compactor Invention, please visit www.MattressRecycling.biz .