The lonely mattress propped up against a tree on the kerbside is a familiar sight on our neighbourhood streets.
In fact, Australians throw away about 1.8 million mattresses and over 500,000 bed bases a year, with a high percentage ending up in landfill.
Sustainability Victoria is here to make a change, investing in research that could produce a bed made from recycled plastic that is also recyclable at the end of its life.
A $300,000 Victorian Government grant delivered by Sustainability Victoria has enabled Swinburne University to partner with start-up Robovoid and GT Recycling to explore innovative ways to use recycled plastics in bed bases and mattresses.
Robovoid's Dr John Stehle explains that the mix of materials present in traditional bedding makes recycling difficult, both practically and economically, so the majority of our unwanted bed bases and mattresses get sent to landfill.
"Recycling companies don't like recycling bedding because it's big and cumbersome to handle, but it also has a combination of materials which is hard to dissect," John says.
"In each traditional bed base, you've got a lot of timber and about 1,000 staples. No one wants to pull out all those staples so they can use the timber again.
"And in the mattress, you've typically got metal springs, foam and various other materials. While the springs can be extracted and sold as scrap metal, and some foams can be used for carpet underlay, most materials have little value and invariably end up in landfill."
