"Yesterday, with the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek MP, and the members for Fenner and Canberra, I visited Soft Landing, a great social enterprise based in Hume in Bean that is doing its best to pull apart mattresses to re-use."

Address to the House of Representatives, Statements by Members, Soft Landing - Mattress Recycling

Wednesday 9 November 2022

Around 740,000 mattresses end up in landfill each year. Here in the ACT we churned through close to 50,000 mattresses last year.

Yesterday, with the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek MP, and the members for Fenner and Canberra, I visited Soft Landing, a great social enterprise based in Hume in Bean that is doing its best to pull apart mattresses to re-use. But some mattress components can't be easily recycled, and some mattress designs are currently completely unrecyclable and just go into landfill.

Soft Landing is also providing important pathways back into work for many Canberrans who have experienced employment challenges and barriers.

Yesterday the minister announced that mattresses have now been added to the minister's product stewardship priority list. This calls on industry to take full responsibility for the full life cycle of their products. That means ensuring the development, design, manufacture, import, sale, use and recovery of materials and products is more sustainable.

While this will take some time, it will act with the great work of organisations like Soft Landing to substantially decrease the amount of product that goes to landfill while ensuring much more of the material is then recycled.