The numbers
Zero Waste Scotland's figure is around 600,000 mattresses disposed of in Scotland each year, with fewer than one in ten collected for recycling. The rest go to energy-from-waste, to landfill, or into a lay-by.
That is not because a mattress cannot be recycled. The springs are steel, the foam can be reprocessed, the fibre and fabric can be recovered. The problem is that taking one apart is manual work, the recovered material is worth little, and a mattress is bulky, awkward and often wet by the time it reaches a facility.
It is also one of the most fly-tipped items in the country, for the same reason: it is too big for a bin, too awkward for a car, and too cheap to be worth anyone's while. The fly-tipping figures are full of them.
- Around 600,000 mattresses a year in Scotland
- Fewer than one in ten recycled
- Steel springs, foam, fibre and fabric
- Stripping is manual and slow
- Often fly-tipped because they are awkward
- Named in the 2026 Circular Economy Strategy
Every legitimate way to get rid of one
Reuse first, if it is clean, dry, undamaged and still has its fire safety label. Charities and reuse organisations can only resell a mattress with the label attached, and Zero Waste Scotland's reuse tool lists the ones that collect. Without the label, reuse is off the table.
Council recycling centres accept mattresses in most areas, and most send them to a specialist recycler rather than the residual skip. Take it in a car where you can; van rules vary by council. The council bulky uplift will also take one, at £5 an item in Glasgow and Edinburgh and a batch price elsewhere, as council bulky uplift charges sets out.
Retailer take-back is the option people forget. When you buy a new mattress, most retailers will collect the old one for a fee, and some for free. Ask before you order rather than after it arrives.
Clean mattress with its label on?
Tell us. We'd rather it went for reuse than recycling, and we'll say so.
What the 2026 strategy plans for mattresses
The Circular Economy Strategy published on 24 March 2026 picked out mattresses, alongside furniture and textiles, as the first products for a stewardship plan due later in 2026. They were chosen for exactly the reasons above: high carbon impact, high reuse potential, low current recycling.
Product stewardship means the producer takes responsibility for the end of life. For packaging that became fees paid to councils. For mattresses it could mean take-back obligations, a fee at the point of sale that funds recycling, or design standards that make them easier to strip. Which mix Scotland chooses is what the plan will set out.
Until then the economics are what they are, and the difference between a recycled mattress and a dumped one is mostly whether someone was willing to carry it.
How we handle them
We carry the mattress out from wherever it is, including the top floor of a tenement, and it goes to a facility that strips it for recycling rather than into a residual load. A single mattress is a quarter load at £160 + VAT; a bed frame with it is usually still a quarter.
That is our mattress removal service. If the mattress is part of a bigger job, a bed, a wardrobe and a sofa in a flat that needs emptying, see furniture removal or house clearance, and note that the sofa is handled under separate rules from the mattress, which trips people up.
If it is clean and labelled, tell us. We would rather it went to a reuse organisation than a recycler, and we will say so.
