CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – As landfills continue to reach capacity, Del. Amy Laufer is continuing her quest to facilitate more recycling of one of the largest items that end up in those facilities – mattresses.
“They’re incredibly problematic because of their size,” Laufer told Cville Right Now. “Landfills work by compaction. They’re constantly compacting the fill, which is waste. But mattresses never compact. They actually take up 400% more space than anything else in a landfill. They take over 100 years to decompose. They’re hugely problematic.”
This past legislative session, for a third straight year, Laufer sponsored a bill to create a recycling program, funded by a front-end tax when someone purchases a mattress, that would collect the mattresses and then send them to be recycled. Laufer said its modeled after similar, successful programs in California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island…