Wicklow-based Envirogreen Recycling is aiming to create 65 new jobs over the next year, with the introduction of Ireland’s first residential mattress recycling service. Set up in 2009, the family-run company, which provides recycling services to commercial customers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, operates two materials recovery facilities in Wicklow and Tyrone.
Under its new recycling service Envirogreen Recycling will collect mattresses from households and recycle 100% of the components using, what managing director Conor Guy describes as a “sophisticated mattress dismantling machine” that has been designed by an Irish engineering firm.
“We’ve created 10 new positions already and have taken on drivers, operators and a supervisor. If it goes national, 65 positions will be a conservative estimate,” he says.
Currently, all mattresses that arrive in civic amenity sites are sent to landfill and even though they are light they take up 23 cubic yards of landfill space each because of their bulkiness.
“At the moment, in Dublin, all the recycling facilities are run by private operators and there’s a fee to take the mattress,” explains Conor Guy. Envirogreen’s mattress recycling service has already started in Dublin and the company is aiming to roll it out nationwide over the next three months in different areas at a time.