Customers who purchase a new IKEA Mattress and have it delivered, now also have the option to have their old mattress removed and recycled locally for $10. This service is part of Winnipeg’s first mattress recycling program and will divert thousands of mattresses from landfills, while creating new jobs for people with employment barriers living in the North End.
After collecting customers’ old mattresses, IKEA will deliver them to Mother Earth Recycling (Mother Earth), an Indigenous owned social enterprise focused on providing jobs to people with employment barriers, especially Indigenous people living in Winnipeg’s North End. There, workers will disassemble the mattresses into their components — wood, metal and padding — and repurpose them for future use.
After the completion of the two-year pilot program Mother Earth plans to begin accepting mattress drop-offs from the public in addition to mattresses collected by retailers. It is estimated that Winnipeggers throw out 40,000 mattresses every year, each of which is made up of nearly 90 per cent recyclable material. For more information on Mother Earth Recycling, please visit www.motherearthrecycling.ca. To learn more about IKEA’s sustainability efforts, including the IKEA Group sustainability reports, please visit: ikea.ca/peopleandplanet
