Rocky Mountain Mattress: A Product Recycling Case Study

Last week, a bright sales manager at Rocky Mountain Mattress asked a higher-up for an opinion on the best way to dispose of a mattress. Rocky Mountain Mattress, as a company, has made a commitment to being “earth conscious” and the sales manager thought that should translate into ensuring that the old mattresses being replaced by those sold by Rocky Mountain Mattress don't find their way to the local landfill.

The idea, I think, is good: a company that helps a consumer recycle the old, worn out item that they’re replacing is doing more than helping the environment — that company is giving buyers a good reason to choose them. Have you ever tried to get rid of a used mattress?

But there are two problems I see here: execution and scalability. Rocky Mountain Mattress’ response to finding green solutions to disposing of old mattresses is to offer up a list of “helpful suggestions to dispose of their old mattress the green way" to each customer purchasing a new mattress. Problem is, that’s not enough to motivate customers to: a)  buy from Rocky Mountain Mattress for the convenience of someone else dealing with the old mattress or b) the "greenness" of Rocky Mountain Mattress’ business practices. And, to be honest, Rocky Mountain Mattress’ suggestions aren’t the most useful, either, consisting of extremely obvious information, on the level of "try selling your mattress on Craigslist" and "contact your local municipality to find a recycling program in your area."

Furthermore, Rocky Mountain Mattress has effectively limited its audience. First of all, the company only distributes its less-than-handy tipsheet to new customers. Second, your "average Joe" only disposes of an old mattress every ten years or so. While there are plenty of mattresses floating around, the real disposal issues are found at local motels. Big, fancy hotels replace mattresses every few years, usually selling them to a liquidator.  The liquidator then typically sells them to small hotels and motels, who in turn put several more years of wear and tear on a mattress before hauling 25 or 50 of them off to the county dump at a time.

If Rocky Mountain Mattresses is sincerely committed to being “earth conscious,” the least the company could do is actually look up recyclers willing to take mattresses in the vicinity of each of its stores, instead of offering up such general tips that wouldn’t convince anyone that recycling a mattress is worth the effort.