A decade-long recycling scheme has passed a significant threshold: MattressNextDay has recycled its 100,000th mattress through the nationwide collection service it launched in 2015. The milestone equates to roughly 4,000 tonnes of bulky waste diverted from landfill, comparable in weight to 26 blue whales, and enough material to stack 25,000 metres high, nearly three Mount Everests. Today, 41% of the retailer’s customers choose to recycle their old mattress when buying a replacement, with more than 93% of materials recovered for reuse. The achievement lands as the UK continues to grapple with a persistent mattress waste problem.
A Decade Of Diverting Waste
The scale of the challenge helps explain why the milestone matters. According to the National Bed Federation, around 4.75 million mattresses are discarded across the UK every year, enough to fill Wembley Stadium twice and cover an area almost four times the size of the City of London. Against that backdrop, MattressNextDay’s mattress disposal and recycling scheme offers customers a way to have their old mattress collected at the same time as a new one is delivered, for a fee of £39.
That price compares favourably with local authority alternatives. National Bed Federation data shows council mattress collections can cost up to £76.30, positioning the retailer’s service as a more affordable route to responsible disposal in many parts of the UK.
Inside The Recycling Process
Every mattress collected through the scheme is transported to recycling partner Matt UK Ltd, where it is deconstructed by hand rather than mechanically shredded. The slower process allows a greater quantity and quality of material to be recovered, with up to 17 different materials separated from a single mattress and given a second life.
Steel springs are returned to steel manufacturing, while polyurethane foam and polyester fillings are reprocessed into products such as home insulation and automotive components. Cotton, wool and woven padding are reused within the textile and carpet industries, and natural fibres including horsehair and coconut fibre are recovered for biomass where no commercial recycling market yet exists. Mattresses still in good condition are donated to registered charities before recycling is considered, and any remaining contaminated material is used as refuse-derived fuel for energy recovery, meaning every mattress collected is diverted from landfill.
Making Sustainability The Easy Choice
The scheme was designed to remove a common headache for customers replacing an old mattress: what to do with the one it replaces.
Martin Seeley, CEO at MattressNextDay, said:
“When someone buys a new mattress, the last thing they want is the headache of figuring out how to dispose of the old one responsibly.
“That’s exactly why we launched our recycling scheme just over a decade ago. We wanted to remove that barrier and make doing the right thing the easiest option.
“Seeing 100,000 mattresses come through the scheme tells us we’ve achieved something much bigger than a number. It shows that when recycling is simple, affordable and built into the buying process, people genuinely want to make more sustainable choices.
Value And Service Together
The recycling milestone follows another customer-facing initiative from the retailer earlier this year, its Lowest Price Promise, which guarantees competitive pricing against a range of leading authorised UK mattress retailers.
Martin Seeley, CEO at MattressNextDay, said:
“Earlier this year we introduced our Lowest Price Promise because we believe customers shouldn’t have to choose between getting a great deal and receiving great service. Together with our recycling scheme, it’s all part of making buying a new mattress as straightforward as possible from start to finish.
Looking Beyond The Milestone
Reaching 100,000 recycled mattresses marks a decade of steady progress rather than an endpoint for the scheme, with the retailer signalling continued investment in services that keep customers’ old mattresses out of landfill.
Martin Seeley, CEO at MattressNextDay, said:
“Reaching 100,000 recycled mattresses is a milestone we’re incredibly proud of, but our focus hasn’t changed. We’ll keep investing in services that make life easier for our customers while helping more mattresses stay out of landfill.”
Between the recycling scheme and the wider push on pricing and service, MattressNextDay’s approach points to a simple proposition: that responsible disposal and good value need not sit at odds with one another, and that when the sustainable option is also the convenient one, customers tend to take it.
