Boston-area residents have survived yet another Sept. 1 lease-turnover. If you are moving yourself or recently relocated your child to or from college, you might be living among piles of furniture, boxes, and worst of all, unwanted mattresses.
Mattresses and box springs are heavy, clunky, and too large to fit in most cars, making them arduous to relocate to centers where they can be recycled or donated.
So before you cut up your mattress and leave it outside for curbside collection in trash bags, here’s what to know about how you can responsibly get rid of your mattress:
Massachusetts banned disposing of mattresses
In November of 2022, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection added mattresses to its list of materials banned from regular disposal because they are expensive to transport, hard to compact, take up a lot of landfill space, and can damage equipment used to break down garbage. Not to mention, 75 percent of the materials that make up mattresses are recyclable and can be reused, according to the state’s website.
“Waste bans don’t mean you can’t get rid of something, just that you have to do it responsibly, which is a big win for the environment,” said Maggie Peard, Lexington’s sustainability and resilience officer.
Lexington’s subsidized mattress recycling program
Luckily, there is a solution for Lexington residents — UTEC, a young adult violence intervention organization based in Lowell, has partnered with the town to offer free mattress pick-up every other Friday, year-round.
UTEC was founded in 1999 by a group of young adults in Lowell who wanted to create a safe space for teens away from local gang violence. The organization has since evolved into a social enterprise that provides educational and career training for disconnected young adults.
UTEC has collected over 2,000 mattresses and box springs from Lexington residents since the partnership’s inception, making it one of the “highest-volume” towns the organization works with, according to Ricardo Febles, UTEC’s chief social enterprise officer and supervisor of the mattress recycling program. The UTEC team deconstructs the mattresses by hand, bails the recyclable materials, and sends them to various aftermarkets where they can be repurposed.
“Lexington residents are doing a little bit more than supporting a for-profit enterprise when using UTEC,” Febles said. “All of the money goes back into our mission of serving underprivileged young adults who have barriers to employment and with challenges early in their life.”
How you can get rid of your mattress for free
You can schedule UTEC to pick up your unwanted mattresses through the town’s website. If you aren’t comfortable with scheduling a service date on a computer, you can call (978) 856-3997 to schedule your mattress pickup.
Once a service date is scheduled, all you have to do is move your unwanted mattress to the curb in front of your home by 7:00 am on the date of your scheduled pickup. Due to insurance boundaries, UTEC is unable to provide white-glove service, Febles said. But if you’re unable to transport your mattress all the way to your curb, you can move it just outside your home and UTEC will retrieve it.
“[UTEC is] an organization well-worth supporting,” said Jonas Miller, director of communications for the town of Lexington.
The next available date to schedule mattress pick-up through UTEC is Oct. 18.