If you’re like me, you never think about a mattress, unless it’s time to get rid of one. You could avail yourself of sidewalk recycling, but it’s been my experience that while people are fine with plucking a wobbly coffee table off the street they don’t like taking home a naked mattress that’s been soaking up god-knows-what for who knows how long. That leaves dragging the thing to the city dump and paying to toss it into a landfill.
Given how many mattresses people get rid of each year, this is not a good thing.
That’s why Rubicon National Social Innovations plans on opening mattress recycling facilities. To that end, they teamed up with the good folks at Architecture for Humanity on a design competition to come up with the best ways “of converting used mattresses into useful and amazing products.” (You can learn about the particulars here.)
On Thursday, Jan. 22, the winners of the “Discarded Dreams: Mattress Recycling Design Competition” will be showcased at a reception from 6-9 p.m. at Keetsa, 271 9th St., San Francisco. I’m hoping that somebody will be honored that night for creating a sleek line of attack-dog-trainer outfits for the home and the office. I’m hopeful in that way.
