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Spring Back: Recycling Mattresses, Renewing Lives

A group of Belmont University students in Nashville, Tennessee, recently took on two tough social issues: the millions of mattresses that end up in landfills and the likelihood that former inmates will return to prison.

In 2011 the students teamed up with Belmont Church to create Spring Back Recycling, a nonprofit that’s already getting a lot of attention, including a story on NPR. And two weeks ago the students beat teams of young entrepreneurs from 37 other countries to become the Enactus World Cup champions.

Spring Back Recycling employs newly released prisoners to take apart used mattresses to recycle the  cotton, metal, wood, foam.

The Numbers According to Spring Back:

  • 30 million mattresses end up in U.S. landfills each year
  • 33 pounds of steel in the average mattress
  • 50 percent of released prisoners are unemployed
  • 67 percent of released prisoners end up back in prison within 3 years
  • 7.62 minutes to for Spring Back to break down average mattress to recycle the cotton, wood, foam, metal
  • 550,000 pounds of materials diverted by Spring Back from landfills so far

Thanks, Mike, for alerting me to this great effort.

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