Usually when people think of recycling, they think of smiling trash cans eagerly welcoming happy bottles and cans. However, most people don’t really think about mattresses. With a number of major landfills starting to run out of space, discarded mattresses have been a thorn in the side of landfill operators. How big of a thorn? A single mattress can take up to 23 cubic feet of space. Over the past few years, the concept of mattress recycling has begun to gain traction. There have been a number of drivers towards mattress recycling, including legislation and the increasing burden that mattresses cause landfill operators.

Someday soon, probably sooner than we think, we’ll have to get serious about removing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plant exhaust, perhaps even extracting it from the atmosphere as well. The Arctic ice cap is shrinking in area and thickness. Another state-sized ice shelf is breaking away from Antarctica as this story is being written. Global warming is blamed for the dramatic changes going on at the extremes of the planet — our home.