We are a waterproof & fluid proof mattress wholesale manufacturer.We make hospitality mattress for hotels motels, cabins and resorts.Our mattresses are perfect for dorms, camps, shelters, and more!We make pillow tops too! Manufactered by Martin Mattress Our Family owned and operated business has over 40 Years of industry experience working for you. We are mattress craftsman who put care and attention into the products you purchase! We have a variety of in stock matttresses and a rapid production factory for large or special orders. Saving you time and money! Residential Sleep Solutions mattresses are perfectly designed forTwin Cities residents buy about 350,000 new mattresses each year, according to the International Sleep Products Association. Of the old ones they replace, about half are reused or given away. But the other half are discarded or dumped, causing problems when the mattresses -- designed to last, not biodegrade -- take up space without breaking down in landfills.
Their sturdy steel springs are so difficult to compress that they can damage compactors, so entire mattresses end up getting dumped in landfills, where they tend to float to the top after other trash decomposes, dirty but intact. Finally, in an age of increasing environmental awareness, mattress-recycling operations are beginning to crop up. Minnesota now has two, including one in southeast Minneapolis that's been fully functional since April. "Welcome to Mattressville," Douglas Jewett said as he meandered through the basement of a Minneapolis warehouse on 15th Avenue SE., where dozens of mattresses stand on end, waiting to be stripped and gutted so the materials in them can be put to new uses. A $200,000 start-up boost from Hennepin County helped Jewett -- chief operating officer for PPL Industries, a nonprofit that offers hands-on skills training -- start the service. "Everything has to be recycled," said Jewett, who has a manufacturing background and has led recycling programs before.
"The longer you wait, the more it costs to get it back." And when mattresses are filled with materials that could have lives beyond their original uses, such as the steel innards and polyurethane foam, finding a way to redistribute those commodities for reuse makes sense, Jewett said. In the Minneapolis facility, a custom-built machine crams and shapes the mattresses' bare steel skeletons into a bale, which is then weighed, tagged and picked up, sold and reused. So far, the steel is the most valuable part of a discarded mattress with the most reuse potential. A given mattress' steel is worth about $16 to PPL, Jewett said. Many components of a mattress can be refashioned, if properly deconstructed. The steel and foam can be melted down, and the low-grade cotton shows promise for use in oil and storm water filtration, said Tim Hagen, research coordinator for the University of Minnesota Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute. Hennepin County commissioned him in June 2008 to research new uses for old mattress materials and explore marketing those second-life products.
For now, the shoddy, outer fabric and wood are primarily used to generate heat, but that could change as a push for mattress recycling yields further research, Hagen said. "Like any recycling process, you've got to separate the individual components and properly prepare them for the marketplace," Hagen said. Jewett anticipates his program will reach the 40,000-mattress-a-year mark within two years, though he estimated it'll be about a decade before mattress recycling is integrated in the mainstream of refuse handling. That's a reasonable goal, given the size of the metro area, said Greg Conkins, contributed goods manager for Goodwill Industries. He oversees the state's first mattress-recycling program operated by Goodwill in Duluth. For each of the past two years, about 17,000 pieces have been processed there, largely drawn through partnerships with 10 counties and their waste management services. The Minneapolis operation, which charges a $15-per-mattress fee, has already partnered with Hennepin and McLeod counties, the cities of Coon Rapids and Anoka, delivery service Suntrax Logistics and furniture retailer Room & Board, all of which bring discarded mattresses to PPL.
Jewett expects more cooperation with counties and retailers as the program takes off. People can bring mattresses to waste drop-off sites and the municipalities will transport them to the recycling plant. The PPL plant will not accept dropoffs from individuals. Despite anticipated growth, there are still difficulties associated with the emerging industry, now in its infancy. "Some of the recycling markets have been challenging, but they slowly but surely overcome that," said Heidi Ringhofer, operations and maintenance supervisor for Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, who since its beginning in 2004 has been involved with the Duluth mattress-recycling operation. Still, overall the industry is a slow-growing one, Ringhofer said. That's partly because there's a limited number of mattresses discarded -- unlike the pervasive plastic bottles that people use and toss every day -- and partly because of the labor-intensive process of stripping mattresses of their many individual components, Ringhofer added.
"They are big items to recycle, and there are such specific items in there," she said. "It's not like when you can recycle glass to glass or aluminum to aluminum." Karlee Weinmann • 612-673-7278WOODBURY, Minn. (KMSP) - Dashcam video captured a motorcycle rider taking a terrifying tumble after hitting an unsecured load that fell from a boat being towed on Interstate 94 in Woodbury, Minnesota. 20-year-old Brendan Jankowski of Hudson, Wis. was heading home on June 18 when the floating foam pad, which was attached to the back of a boat being towed, dropped to the pavement unexpectedly. “I didn’t want to just swerve and possibly hit a car and get run over so I tried to get to the furthest part of the right of my lane,” said Jankowski. “I checked to see if the [next] lane was clear, and you know the rest.” Linda Leverty captured the incident on her dash cam, later sharing the video on YouTube and Facebook. The video has since received more than 300,000 views. Jankowski was wearing a helmet and motorcycle jacket when the object fell of the back of the boat.
He says he just bought the jacket within an hour of the crash, and was saving up for the pants and gloves. “I just bought the jacket that day thinking I’d come back next week and get the gear and have the full set,” Jankowski said. “I happened to use the jacket I just bought to help save me quite a bit of pain.” State Patrol said the SUV did not stop at the scene and may have been unaware that they lost the item when the incident happened. Jed Duncan with Riders Academy says they prepare students to encounter hazardous objects on the road much like Jankowski did. “We run over them if they’re small,” he said. “If it’s bigger or harder than that we teach you to swerve around it—but trying to figure out what to do in the moment of time, its hard to say.” Duncan said Jankowski responded appropriately in the split second he had. “I’m not going to hindsight or Monday morning quarterback,” Duncan said. “He was paying attention; he tried to get around that thing.
The fact that he went to the right—usually you go to the right because there’s no oncoming traffic that way.” According to the State Patrol, the SUV carrying the unsecured load has yet to be located.READ THIS NEXT - Boat dropped in middle of Highway 47 near Isle, Minn.Last month, Fox 9 shared the story of a Minnesota couple who were headed southbound on Highway 47 from Isle, when they passed a large truck heading north. The truck was towing a camper and a boat trailer, but the trailer was empty and a strap was flapping loosely in the wind. Just moments later, they found out why. They came upon an 18-foot boat lying across the road, as if it had washed up on shore.FOX 9 INVESTIGATION: Flirting with disasterHave you ever been driving on the freeway and found yourself behind an old rickety trailer filled with junk or next to a loaded down pick-up truck that didn't seem safe? It happens a lot on Twin Cities roads. This year alone, motorists have lost at least 5,000 items along Twin Cities freeways according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation.