Washington DC, US – Mattress recycling legislation has been tabled in both New York and Virginia. Trade association ISPA has expressed its continued support for the Virginia bills, but not those in New York, which have been reintroduced despite being defeated in last year’s legislative session.
It described the New York proposals as “flawed”. While the pair of senate and assembly bills would establish a state mattress recycling programme, neither includes provision for a small point-of-sale fee on mattresses to fund it, instead imposing the costs entirely on manufacturers. ISPA believes such fees are the most efficient, transparent and equitable way to fund mattress recycling programmes.
The bills would also ban advanced recycling technologies, and mandate what it describes as “impracticable and costly collection convivence criteria”. The result, ISPA said, would be an excessive regulatory burden on the mattress industry. “[This is] both infeasible and inconsistent with existing state mattress recycling programmes,” it said.
The story is different in Virginia, however. There, the house and senate bills were crafted with input from ISPA. They mirror the structure that has allowed the Mattress Recycling Council to operate efficiently in California, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and which is being followed by the new programme in Oregon.