The Hidden Cost of Your Good Night’s Sleep
In June the Freakonomics Podcast explored the recent phenomenon of mattress stores popping up all over the country. Surely you’ve seen a Mattress-Firm, Sleepy’s, or Sleep Number store pop up in your town, sometimes right across the street from another. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics, articulated in the podcast the reality that the mattress market has become high profit because manufacturing costs, ease in marketing, low franchise fees for store owners, and pent-up demand from post-recession behavior. You may be one of the many people who has purchased a new mattress in the last two years, is considering a new one, or is contemplating having your next one delivered to your front door rolled up …show more content…
“If you visited one of our landfills you would be shocked to see that the top layer of landfill cover is nearly all old mattresses”, Wake County Solid Waste Management Director John Roberson said. “The nature of landfills is to compact trash and cover over it with more. Unfortunately because of spring recoil, mattresses compact by less than 50% making our job even more difficult.” For those in the solid waste world, compaction is the key to achieving useful life. According to Roberson, bagged trash contains a significant amount of air. When it hits the landfill the primary job of landfill operators is to sort and compact that waste. Unfortunately mattresses often compact at rates of less than 50%. “Because of the compaction problem no matter where you put mattresses in the landfill they end up pushing their way to the top and the …show more content…
“We have to put the mattresses in specific areas within the landfills because if a mattress ends up on a landfill slope, as the compactor moves over it, the springs recoil, pushing the mattress to the top of the pile or out past the edge. If the slope isn’t compacted, rain water that moves over landfill liners moves through the waste, turning that runoff into waste water instead of storm runoff.” Wake County Commissioner Sig Hutchinson, a lifelong advocate for environmental protection, said, “We are working with waste management on creating recycling programs that address this problem. Mattress disposal presents an issue with volume of waste water mitigation and is prompting next generation approaches to efficiency maximization within our waste
In June the Freakonomics Podcast explored the recent phenomenon of mattress stores popping up all over the country. Surely you’ve seen a Mattress-Firm, Sleepy’s, or Sleep Number store pop up in your town, sometimes right across the street from another. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics, articulated in the podcast the reality that the mattress market has become high profit because manufacturing costs, ease in marketing, low franchise fees for store owners, and pent-up demand from post-recession behavior. You may be one of the many people who has purchased a new mattress in the last two years, is considering a new one, or is contemplating having your next one delivered to your front door rolled up …show more content…
“If you visited one of our landfills you would be shocked to see that the top layer of landfill cover is nearly all old mattresses”, Wake County Solid Waste Management Director John Roberson said. “The nature of landfills is to compact trash and cover over it with more. Unfortunately because of spring recoil, mattresses compact by less than 50% making our job even more difficult.” For those in the solid waste world, compaction is the key to achieving useful life. According to Roberson, bagged trash contains a significant amount of air. When it hits the landfill the primary job of landfill operators is to sort and compact that waste. Unfortunately mattresses often compact at rates of less than 50%. “Because of the compaction problem no matter where you put mattresses in the landfill they end up pushing their way to the top and the …show more content…
“We have to put the mattresses in specific areas within the landfills because if a mattress ends up on a landfill slope, as the compactor moves over it, the springs recoil, pushing the mattress to the top of the pile or out past the edge. If the slope isn’t compacted, rain water that moves over landfill liners moves through the waste, turning that runoff into waste water instead of storm runoff.” Wake County Commissioner Sig Hutchinson, a lifelong advocate for environmental protection, said, “We are working with waste management on creating recycling programs that address this problem. Mattress disposal presents an issue with volume of waste water mitigation and is prompting next generation approaches to efficiency maximization within our waste