What Does Mattress Recycling and Growing Mushrooms Have In Common?
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by: cectayl
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Word Count: 452
First let's take a look at one medium in which commercial and hobby farmers grow mushrooms and that is called "Mushroom Manure." Cottonseed meal is often one component of the nutrient rich, dark textured mixture which may also contain chicken litter, gypsum, wheat straw, peat moss, and lime. Hopefully for mattress recyclers, these components are not being found in the mattresses being recycled. So, what is the common link?
That which binds "Mushroom Manure's" cottonseed and the cotton in mattresses being recycled is the whole industry built, bought, sold and traded around the term "Waste Cotton." Cottonseed is a waste cotton byproduct generated from the growing and harvesting of raw cotton. Raw cotton is a common component of mattresses, roughly nine pounds per mattress on average, and when a mattress is recycled the original raw cotton in the mattress then becomes "waste cotton."
In this author's humble opinion and fully recognizing and crediting the fine FEAT folks in Scotland with the twenty plus components they have identified during their mattress recycling operation, mattress recycling can only be profitable when there is an adequate upfront recycling fee charged, steel is recaptured and sold in a reasonable scrap metal market, wood is recaptured and sold as dimensional lumber or sold as chips or pellets for mulch or fuel, and waste cotton is sold in a reasonable waste cotton market.
Frankly, mattress recyclers can spend a lot of time and energy seeking buyers of raw cotton from mattress recycling which can be as wasteful as trying to sell a used car on a new car lot. Governments protect and supplement raw cotton growers and raw cotton straight from the field may well have a high dose of pesticides in it, but lacks the fire retardant treatment mandated for cotton used in mattresses.
When mattress recyclers search the Internet for "waste cotton," a whole new world is opened up identifying within milliseconds such sites as Agriscape Forums Classifieds For Cotton Waste Website where global waste cotton buyers and sellers openly offer to buy or sell waste cotton and cotton related products.
Does this mean this author was totally wrong in an earlier article stating that paper mills are a big purchaser of cotton from mattress recycling? Not at all. Searching the Internet for "Waste Cotton" also turns up such fine waste cotton buyers as Atlas Paper Mills in Miami.
The Internet is a wonderful resource to locate buyers of mattress recycling components. Use it and if you find a valuable search term - please take a second to share it. This author would love to have the time back which was spent looking for "cotton" buyers when he should have searched "waste cotton."
Now you know.
About the Author
Cecil Taylor is the Inventor of the Spring Compactor Invention. For further information on Mattress Recycling and the Spring Compactor Invention, please visit www.MattressRecycling.biz.
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