The fate of a forsaken mattress can rank with the nastiest of breakups. Dumped, it festers forever, wasting space, leaking toxic memories.And now NW Furniture Bank is giving us better. Bill and Joelene Lemke have added the Spring Back Mattress Recycling business plan to the non-profit they founded in 2007. The first version of the furniture bank was, and is, a model of sustainability. It accepts usable furniture from businesses and individuals then passes it to people who need it. Clients referred by social services can, for a $50 fee, furnish their household from spoons to sofas – and beds. Beds are key, the Lemkes believe. No one should have to sleep on the floor for lack of one. Mattresses are the mainstay of the good they do, and they accept those in good condition to sanitize and send to a new home. They also have rejected thousands too worn and stained to be used again. The fate of those mattresses troubled them. NW Furniture bank succeeds, in part, because the Lemkes focus on the highest and best use for the goods it receives.
That’s why they founded Hope Furnishings at 117 Puyallup Ave. to sell high-end furniture donations that do the best good when they are converted into money. Proceeds help pay the rent and expenses for the furniture bank downstairs. There had to be a way, the Lemkes figured, to turn old mattresses into a cash stream. Last year, they found it. John Gonas, a professor at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., developed it when he challenged his students to come up with a business plan to deal with an unmet need. The students started with the need: Americans lug some 30 million mattresses to landfills each year, and those mattresses don’t decompose. They just bulk up landfill space. Then they hit on the plan: About 90 percent of a mattress can be recycled and sold. It’s solid, dirty work with good supervision, a reasonable job for a person trying to rebuild a life after time in prison. Gonas and the students put the elements together into the detailed business plan NW Furniture Bank purchased after the Lemkes visited the original Spring Back site.
That’s about the time they met Jeremy Simler, who worked for non-profits including Young Life, before a stint as a mortgage broker. “Bill Lemke asked me, ‘How do you feel about recycling mattresses?’ I said, ‘That sounds disgusting,’” Simler said. When the factory space across the parking lot from the store went vacant, NW Furniture Bank acquired it. “We got the keys June 1 and started to clean it up,” Simler said. “We put in a loading dock and got our heavy equipment.” That would be the three vertical balers that compact mattress components into materials for which recyclers pay good money. There’s one for foam, one for plastic and one for mattress toppers. The materials could come back as soda bottles, carpets and padding or fleeces. There’s also a container for metal, from frames to springs. Last week, Simler watched a recycler haul off the first lot. “That’s our first revenue check right there,” he said. Devin Christianson, who found his job at NW Furniture Bank through job training at Goodwill, has been helping set up the operation and deconstruct the first of the mattresses.
Spring Back should be ready to bounce by August. “At full capacity we’ll be processing 2,000 a month with four employees and a foreman, six people, including me,” Simler said. Most of them will come from Progress House, the Tacoma work release program that helps people coming out of prison settle back into productive lives. “I can create jobs for people who are had to employ,” Simler said. “There’s a great back story here. I got a call from a guy who said, ‘I heard you need to hire me. I’ve done what you are about to do.’” He was a prisoner at Monroe Correctional Complex, which has a mattress-recycling program. He knew the work, and he was due for release. Like Christianson, he can take a mattress apart in about 10 minutes with one pound of non-recyclable waste left over. He’s got his work stacked up for him. The Pan Pacific Hotel in Seattle is refurbishing its beds, and those box springs and mattresses are lined up on their ends against the outer wall of the building.
Hotels and individuals can bring their worn and stained mattresses for recycling for $10 per piece. That’s $20 for a queen set. A king set is three pieces and costs $30. That’s a bargain, monetarily and ecologically, said Joelene Lemke. “The dump charges $11 a piece,” she said. It’s an advertising and ethical win for mattress retailers who are concerned about the back end of their business, too, Simler said “The other source of mattresses is a large commercial retailer that advertises that it will take away your old mattress,” Simler said. “They pay us to take their used mattresses. If there is a recoverable mattress, we use it next door and don’t charge them for it.” Next door, those mattresses go home with the 100-plus families each month who furnish their fresh start with the help of NW Furniture Bank. “It’s just a huge blessing,” Simler said of the business. “I hope this thing is transformative for people, I think about systemic change in the lives we touch.
A good night’s sleep on a mattress we were able to rescue. Or the creation of a job. It is good stuff.” It is the stuff of sweet dreams - and sustainable realities. NW Furniture Bank’s Spring Back Mattress Recycling Drop-off fee is $10 per piece (king sets are three pieces) Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. 2301 Dock St., Tacoma, 98421.Mattess Warehouse 97 percent from Karl Tobler on Vimeo. Mattress Warehouse Comfort Exchange from Karl Tobler on Vimeo. Our Most Popular Brands The feel of a pillowy-soft mattress with the responsive support of a Tempur-Pedic, for the perfect combination of softness and support for perfectly relaxing sleep. With elegant cashmere infused quilts, along with hand-embroidered accouterments, each model in the Estate Collection is designed to showcase only the very best. Sealy is dedicated to helping the world sleep better. It’s that vision that drives everything Sealy does.
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