In response to this challenge, Bounce Back Recycling, a social enterprise established in 2017 by the Galway Traveller Movement, works to divert mattresses from landfill while providing employment opportunities for members of the Irish Traveller community. Although based in Galway, Bounce Back Recycling provides commercial recycling services in other areas across Ireland.
At Bounce Back Recycling’s Galway facility, a custom-built processing machine handles around 1,000 mattresses per week, diverting substantial volumes of bulky waste from landfill. Their employees are trained to disassemble mattresses by hand, ensuring a higher material recovery rate and better material quality than mechanical recycling can achieve. Recovered materials are sorted and repurposed to give a second life to nearly all of the materials. For instance, foam is cleaned and shredded for use in home insulation products while steel springs are recycled as metal scrap used in production.
Since their inception, Bounce Back Recycling has processed over 200,000 mattresses, expanding their operations from a modest 280 m² facility to a larger 930 m² site.
Bounce Back Recycling also operates a sister social enterprise, Bounce Back Upcycling, which employs women from the Traveller Community to refurbish and resell donated furniture.54 Located beside Bounce Back Recycling, the upcycling team often incorporates materials recovered from deconstructed mattresses into their furniture pieces, creating a circular flow of resources that strengthens the work of both enterprises.
Read more about Bounce Back Recycling and their mattress recycling operations in our report on Social Enterprises’ Role in Furniture and Mattress Circularity.
