With the help of a $75,000 two year grant from Dow Canada, the Lacombe Regional Waste Services Commission (LRWSC) and Lacombe County launched a two year pilot program for Residential mattress recycling beginning October 2020. The program will divert up to 3600 mattresses from the local landfill, allowing them to be recycled.

LRWSC has set up collection bins at all sites, and constructing a building (May 2021) at the Prentiss Landfill facility to house the mattresses. During the two pilot project, the mattresses are collected for free from Lacombe County residents. They are shipped to a Calgary facility, where they are dismantled and recycled for a fee, covered for two years by the Dow Canada’s grant. Instead of decomposing for over 80 years in a landfill, the collected mattress materials are transformed into new materials for new products.

Foam - carpet underlay

Wood - landscaping and animal bedding

Metal - melted down

Felt - construction materials and moving blankets

Plastic and cardboard - new plastics and cardboard

During the two-year pilot project, LRWSC and Lacombe County will look for opportunities to partner with other organizations to ensure long-term financial arrangements are in place or develop a user-pay system for mattress recycling.

Since the inception of the program up to the end of 2021, LRWSC has collected and transported 3000 mattresses for recycling into reusable products.  Both LRWSC and Lacombe County extend a huge THANK YOU to DOW Canada for funding this project! 

About Dow Canada

Dow Canada, a subsidiary of Dow, employs approximately 850 people in Canada. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Dow Canada has four manufacturing locations: Fort Saskatchewan and Prentiss (Lacombe County) in Alberta and West Hill (Toronto) and St. Clair River (Corunna) in Ontario. Dow Canada’s Eastern Canada Regional Sales Centre is located in downtown Toronto. Dow produces polyethylene in Alberta. The St Clair River site modifies polyethylene and polypropylene. Both polyethylene and polypropylene products are used to make a broad range of innovative and technology-based products and solutions in the packaging, industrial and infrastructure, and consumer care industries.  At the West Hill location, Dow manufactures water-based emulsions, which go into a variety of products, the biggest single application being latex paint. For more information, please visit www.dowcanada.com and follow us on Twitter @Dow_Canada.