Residents looking to dump old mattresses and box springs can now do so for free — legally — through a new program at MarBorg Industries.
It used to cost residents about $30 to dispose of a mattress at MarBorg’s Construction and Demolition (C&D) Recycling and Transfer Facility at 119 N. Quarantina St. in Santa Barbara, but now the city’s trash and recycling facilitator will gladly take them off locals’ hands.
“Anyone can drop them off anytime during operating hours, and there’s no charge for those any longer,” said MarBorg business manager Derek Carlson.
The new effort launched Jan. 1 as part of a statewide recycling program for used mattresses and box springs called “Bye Bye Mattress.”
That effort was spearheaded by the nonprofit Mattress Recycling Council, which entered into a contract with MarBorg for the free drop offs.
The idea being, Carlson said, that as a producer of waste, MarBorg forgoes its normal fee in support of recycling.
Instead of taking old mattresses to a landfill, the Mattress Recycling Council will collect the discarded mattresses from MarBorg and take them to a recycling facility closer to San Luis Obispo, where 95 percent of the material will be recovered.
The new program excludes futon, crib or couch mattresses and only applies to drop offs at the downtown C&D facility, Carlson said.
Local nonprofits like the Community Environmental Council have been promoting the program on social media, according to CEC executive director Sigrid Wright.
MarBorg is also advertising the effort in its newsletter in the hope of preventing any future illegal mattress dumping.
“This is just another avenue to get rid of them free of charge,” Carlson said. “We hope they’ll take advantage of it. Anything we can do to keep this stuff off the streets.”
Locals have a couple legal options for mattress disposal.
If they don’t take advantage of the new drop-off program, they can take the mattress to the Santa Barbara County landfill.
A resident must pay $22 to drop off a carload weighing less than 500 pounds to the South Coast Recycling & Transfer Station on Calle Real, according to the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department website.
Those looking for another free option can take advantage of the two residential pickups offered annually by MarBorg, which outside of those two instances typically charges $100 to $200 for a pickup.
That program applies to customers in Goleta, Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara County.
— Noozhawk staff writer Gina Potthoff can be reached at gpotthoff@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.