Louth County Council set to lobby government on mattress recycling scheme
Louth County Council has passed a motion to lobby the government to introduce additional measures to combat illegal dumping of large household items, like mattresses and sofas.
The motion was proposed by Fianna Fáil Cllr John Sheridan, who said that LCC should lobby the Minister for Housing for a retailer based recycling scheme.
“We all know the scourge of illegal dumping of mattresses and sofas. It’s reckless, bad for the environment and undermines so much good work by community groups to keep areas tidy,” said Cllr Sheridan.
Cllr Sheridan compared the proposed scheme to the WEEE recycling scheme, where a retailer will take back an old appliance when a new one is bought.
According to Cllr Sheridan, that scheme has been very successful since being brought in.
“This has successfully reduced illegal dumping of white goods in recent years including 120000 fridges in 2020 alone. I think a similar scheme for mattresses and couches would have a very positive impact,” said Cllr Sheridan.
“It would also provide a solution to retailers who often are asked to remove used mattresses or couches when doing deliveries of new ones and who currently have to take on the cost of recycling them.”
Cllr Sheridan called a retailer based scheme a “gamechanger”, while the Department of Housing currently wants to continue with “mattress amnesty days”, which saw 2000 mattresses brought to recycling plants in Louth last year.
“We all know the situation, we saw during covid when so much decluttering was happening, late at night a used mattress or couch will suddenly appear on the side of a rural road. we've even seen some items dumped outside charity shops.”
Green Party Cllr Marianne Butler supported the motion, saying that something different to mattress amnesty needs to be done to deal with the bulky household items.
Cllr Butler said that the cost to recycle mattresses is “quite high” and that this cost would need to be factored in at the point of purchase.
The council is set to write to the Department of Housing around this issue after the motion was passed, seeking to prioritise the scheme under the 2025 Environmental plan.
Cllr Sheridan says that the logic of the scheme is to help facilitate the circular economy, where the end of life is factored into the selling of products.
“The logic is that when you buy a new mattress or sofa that recycling of your old household item is available via the retailer. It is part of the circular economy concept which means that we factor end of life of products into selling new products.”