"It was that Sunday hour when lucky people carry mattresses along the Arbat and from the market. Newly-married couples and Soviet farmers are the principal purchasers of spring mattresses. They carry them upright, clasping them with both arms. Indeed, how can they help clasping those blue, shiny-flowered foundations of their happiness!"
Ninety-five years after Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's ruminations about the existential essence of the mattress in "The Twelve Chairs," this symbol of the family hearth, "the be-all and the end-all of furnishings and the essence of domestic comfort" now enters the circular economy in Bulgaria. We approach two business ladies to explain how this happens and whether the modern mattress spells the end of the ordinary old-fashioned mattress.
The first lady is Gena Subeva, an entrepreneur in the business of mattresses with experience of more than 25 years, who has started the mattress-recycling project Re-Mattress - an innovative idea for Bulgaria. The second lady is Vanyusha Florova, a manufacturer of traditional tufted textile-filled mattresses.
Every Year 150,000 Mattresses End Up for Waste Collection in Bulgaria
Subeva says that about 150,000 mattresses end up for waste collection in Bulgaria every year, which is 15% of the production of mattresses. Subeva is the main force behind a demo project for the preparation of old mattresses for recycling or re-use. The project is funded by the EU-funded Environment Operational Programme.
In Subeva's words, the price of new mattresses in Bulgaria increased by 50% in the past two years. Sales in September 2022 dropped by between 5% and 10%.
Old mattresses are not a problem for Bulgaria alone. According to Subeva, few countries in Europe have found a solution, with the Scandinavian nations having made the biggest achievements so far.
Proper hygiene demands that mattresses are replaced after between seven and ten years of use. Some people replace their mattress every five years while others demand a 40-year guarantee, Subeva says.
"Every time our drivers take a new mattress to a customer, the customer wants their old mattress taken away. We do this for them. It got us thinking of how old mattresses can be renewed, which naturally led to the idea of Re-Mattress which was born ten years ago," Subeva says.
The demo project for preparation of old mattresses for new use or for recycling has two parts. In part one, old mattresses are inspected for re-use fitness. Those found fit undergo machine washing, steaming, dry disinfection, packaging and labeling for the cleaning and disinfection processes, and are then offered for sale as second-hand mattresses or donated. Subeva expects that no more than 5-10% of the collected mattresses will be fit for re-use.
Polyurethane in Old Mattresses Becomes Home Insulation
In the second part of the project, old mattresses are to be disassembled and their components: wood, metal, and polyurethane, used anew. The textile part will be landfilled. The polyurethane will be used as insulating material in construction, given that expert assessments have shown that it has better insulating properties than mineral wool. At this stage, talks have been conducted with dye producers who supply complete systems for home retrofitting. The idea is to include the polyurethane from the mattresses as the insulating material in the kit.
The scope of the demo project for recycling and recovery of used sleeping mattresses covers Southwestern Bulgaria: the cities of Doupnitsa, Kyustendil, Bansko and Sofia. However, a national awareness campaign has started urging buyers of a new mattress to think about what they will do with their old one.
The common practice at the moment is to take the old mattress to the rubbish bin for curbside waste collection, without even checking the local schedule for the collection of bulky rubbish items, Subeva says. The project beneficiary is now in talks with the local authorities to provide a dedicated spot where people could take their old mattresses, from where the company will fetch them to the recycling facility located in the village of Peturch, just off Sofia.
Another option is to sign agreements with sellers of mattresses who will undertake to take in the old mattresses replaced by new ones, and bring them to the recycling facility.
The recycling facility is expected to be commissioned by the end of October.
The aim of the demo project is to prevent the landfilling of mattresses as they take up too much of the scarce space in waste-management facilities.
Subeva says Re-Mattress participated in a recent art festival with an information campaign targeting households and called "EGO-free", where EGO stands for the Bulgarian acronym for "oversize rubbish items". The demo project will be presented at a roundtable about old mattresses recycling and re-use as part of the circular economy, to be held in Sofia on October 18.
"Have respect for the blue-flowered spring mattress. It's a family hearth. […] How sweet it is to sleep to the democratic hum of its springs. What marvellous dreams a man may have when he falls asleep on its blue hessian. How great is the respect enjoyed by a mattress owner".
Sharing her views on mattresses' recycling and the circular economy, Vanyusha Florova, who owns and runs a small business making traditional tufted wool-filled mattresses, says that industrially produced mattresses are made of foam plastic with the addition of springs, that foam plastic is not pleasant to the touch of human skin, and that this is a 100% synthetic material which she cannot imagine being recycled in any way other than being melted.
"Our traditional mattresses are fit for use for 20-30 years. They are filled with homemade wool or a uniform mix of textile scraps, we sew the cases and that's it," Florova says, explaining how a traditional mattress is made. "People who want to have their traditional and thinned-out mattress renewed come to us. The filling is carded anew to puff it up. We add filling to get the required thickness and grate some soap for nice smell," Florova says.
The Traditional Woolen Mattress is More Expensive but Remains Heirloom
"Wool is ever-lasting," Florova says, sharing her environmental awareness views. She speaks of a resurge in customer interest in woolen eiderdowns. "Wool is more expensive but the woolen article remains a heirloom because cloth can tear, while wool is wool. It can be washed with lukewarm water and detergent, left to dry, after which it becomes such a nice sight to behold. We put it in the carding machine, card it anew, which means we re-process it, and as with the textile scrap-filled mattress, the customer can go on using the same woolen mattress for 30 more years," Florova says.
"There was a guy who went to work as an IT expert in Australia and ordered a minivan to fill it up with woolen mattresses, pillows and covers. We also have seen an influx of young people who complain of their foam plastic mattresses saying that the things are unfit to sleep on as they make you perspire too much," Florova says.
The lady, who has been in the business of traditional mattresses for 20 year now, says that she chose her occupation not only because she trained for a seamstress but also because she likes doing her own thing. "When you make something yourself and see people's pleasure, I cannot describe the feeling one gets," Florova says.
Authors' note: The piece includes quotes from Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's novel "The Twelve Chairs". The English translations are from http://www.lib.ru/ILFPETROV/ilf_petrov_12_chairs_engl.txt.
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