Discarded mattresses a neighborhood nightmare

Posted 7/30/15

They’re like mushrooms, popping up everywhere.

Only, they’re discarded mattresses, and nobody wants to pick them up – even though, according to Rhode Island Resource Recovery, they’re 90 …

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Discarded mattresses a neighborhood nightmare

Posted

They’re like mushrooms, popping up everywhere.

Only, they’re discarded mattresses, and nobody wants to pick them up – even though, according to Rhode Island Resource Recovery, they’re 90 percent recyclable.

Ann Meschino, owner of Sandy Lane Meat Market, is one of the latest victims of the dump-and-scram mattress scam. Meschino has a pink Recycling Association bin on the side of her property. It’s been there four years. She thought having a bin for clothes and shoes would be a convenience to her customers while aiding a good cause. Also, Recycling Associates offered to pay her, but that’s only happened once in four years.

In the past year, much more than clothing is being dropped off at the bin. There are pieces of furniture, TVs and household goods – and worst of all, since seemingly no one wants them, mattresses.

Over the last three weeks, more than a half-dozen mattresses have been dumped on her property. Recycling Associates removed the mattresses soon after Meschino talked to the Beacon, and at her request the bin will be removed shortly.

Meschino is not alone.

Just across the street, the Knights of Columbus has had a similar experience. Ray Conroy, the group’s treasurer, reports that mattresses and a wide assortment of items other than clothing are frequently left outside the purple-and-white Big Brothers Big Sisters bin on Warwick Avenue.

Conroy has no problem with the mattresses collecting, because as soon as he calls the agency responds and cleans up. There was one incident in which a man was spotted pouring something on one of the discarded mattresses and the fire department responded for fear it was gasoline.

The mattresses aren’t particular to that neighborhood. The division of minimum housing reported numerous complaints, although they couldn’t provide specifics. Property owners are cited for debris and cases are referred to Municipal Court.

The volume of calls received by the city’s sanitation division best illustrates the magnitude of the problem. John Cole of the division said Tuesday that out of the 300 calls received daily concerning trash collections, 20 involve mattresses.

Donald Mariani, owner of Recycling Associates, which operates 100 bins in Rhode Island and another 500 in Massachusetts, said he is seeing a 200 percent increase in items being dumped at containers. While people continue to use bins for clothing and shoes, he said there are piles of furniture and other unwanted items outside the bins in what he views as “illegal dumping.” He said photos of vehicle registration plates dumping at the bins have been provided to police, but as far as he knows no action has been taken.

“The towns get mad at us, and we’ve tried to get the police involved,” he said.

Mariani said the company collects about six million pounds of clothing annually, which might otherwise end up going into the waste stream and the landfill. Mattresses, he said, are pulled out and shipped separately for disposal. The company is no longer able to afford paying property owners for locating bins, he said.

The city does not pick up mattresses, although it offers a “heavy” collection of furniture, carpeting and electronic devices, including televisions. These collections must be scheduled with a call to the city and are limited to about five items.

“You can’t put a pile out there,” he said.

The city won’t collect construction debris and steers clear of chain-link fences that tear up the mechanisms of sanitation trucks.

Cole says callers are told they need to bring mattresses to the state landfill themselves or find someone to take them away. The landfill, Rhode Island Resource Recovery, charges $15 for a mattress and $15 for a box spring. If the city were to collect mattresses along with the heavy pickups, the charge is $50 a mattress.

There’s logic to the system, explains Sarah Kite-Reeves, director of recycling services for Resource Recovery. The $50 is designed to discourage mixing mattresses in with other materials. If that happens, the metal, fabric, shoddy foam, wood and plastic that goes into mattresses and box springs is difficult to recover.

With its no-mattress-collection policy, Kite-Reeves said, “Warwick went the extreme. Very few municipalities don’t deal with mattresses at all.”

In addition to the $15 “car price” and the $50 charge for lumping a mattress in with other trash, the state offers a $250 per ton rate for mattresses delivered to the landfill. At an average weight of 30 pounds per mattress, that represents more than 60 mattresses for $250.

Kite-Reeves said many communities have a mattress recycling facility, much like the city has a composting station, where people can deliver their mattresses for free or a fee. She said in the course of a year, Resource Recovery processes between 32,000 and 38,000 mattresses, not counting those mattresses furniture companies dispose of when selling replacement mattresses.

While a mattress recycling facility may seem like an easy remedy, Director of Public Works David Picozzi said he wants to review regulations with Resource Recovery and understand whether mattresses would impact the overall tonnage the city can dump at the preferred municipal rate. He likes the idea of a collection facility.

“Sounds better than what we are currently doing, which is nothing,” he said.

In an email, Mayor Scott Avedisian pointed out that the City Council was opposed to implementing a mattress fee. He said he and Picozzi are exploring mattress collection locations that would be operated by a private contractor.

The issue promises to be less of a problem once the extended producer responsibility law approved by the General Assembly comes into play next spring, Kite-Reeves said. Under the law, mattress manufactures will share in the cost of disposal through the Mattress Recycling Council, a non-profit organization. Municipalities and residents will be able to dump mattresses at the landfill for recycling for free.

Kite-Reeves is hopeful others will follow the path set by mattress manufacturers.

“Tires are a headache,” she said, noting that they are collected during virtually every beach and stream cleanup. Other products that could also be pulled out of the waste stream and recycled are carpeting and medications.

This all sounds wonderful for a cleaner future Warwick. For the time being, however, some people are resolving their unwanted mattress problem by dumping it on responsible people like Meschino.

Comments

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  • falina

    "Operated by a private contractor." Don't worry, Scotty has a friend....

    Thursday, July 30, 2015 Report this

  • Scal1024

    On the flip side though falina...if this was done by the city creating new union positions, would you complain about that also?

    Friday, July 31, 2015 Report this