Springs Eternal

Part of my work involves being ultimately responsible for a group of small community/environmental enterprises involved in the diversion of re-useable goods from the 'waste stream'.

From speaking to people at conferences and elsewhere in this line of business, it seems that one of the big challenges right now is what to do about all the used mattresses that currently end up in landfill, where they occupy a huge amount of space because they simply refuse to be compacted by any of the machinery currently available (try crushing them, and they instantly spring back to their original dimensions).

With this in mind, when I myself had a used mattress a few months back, I single-handedly dissected it to see exactly what was inside; to see if this inspired me to think of any potential new uses for any of the materials I found there; and to discover just how much time and effort it took to break it down into its individual components.

Several types of fabric emerged - though without finding out more about their precise composition and attributes (such as their fire resistance), it's hard to say what markets might exist out there for these materials.

What was left at the end of this entire process was an elegant frame of bright, springy steel wire - which I ended up hanging on the far wall of our garage at home as a kind of 'found object' and informal 'work of art'.

And here it is...