BedShred, a Lowcountry Green Business for Climate Action, is helping to close the material loop in the mattress industry. Serving Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties, BedShred is the area's only mattress recycling service and offers home pick up. BedShred.com was started in 2015 through the Charleston mattress initiative, and has since diverted over 125,000 mattresses and boxsprings from our local landfills. For each mattress that's recycled, a portion of the proceeds goes towards funding the City of Charleston’s mattress recycling program which began in January of 2021, along with Lowcountry Local, Lowcountry Land Trust, and One Tree planted. In partnership with the City’s mattress recycling program, BedShred offers a free drop off location for Charleston residents at 2150 Milford Street.

 

   As the name suggests, the mattresses are deconstructed and materials are put to new uses. 

Collaborating with Nine Lives Recycling in Pampilco, SC, materials are stored and processed to take on a new life. The foam becomes commercial carpet padding, the steel coils are taken to a scrap yard and smelted down, wood from boxsprings is untreated and can be used in reclamation projects (available free to the public). At the end of the process, BedShred leaves only 10% of each mattress being discarded as compact waste.

 

   Many mattress manufacturers build in a fixed lifespan, also known as planned obsolescence, and the waste is difficult to compact and take up space in our landfills. The U.S. throws away 18.2 million mattresses a year, but there are only 56 facilities across the country available to recycle them. We’re lucky to have BedShred here in the Lowcountry helping to reuse and recycle all that mattress waste!