Mattresses are our friends. For years, mattresses selflessly serve our sleeping pleasure. We should all be grateful for our mattresses; after all, most of us were conceived on one.
Why, then, are our mattresses being abandoned in dumps and left to the seagulls? Every year in the U.S. 40 million mattresses get thrown in the trash. Don’t our mattresses deserve another chance?
The problem is, the nature and construction of mattresses has made them difficult to dispose of. They often end up in landfills because they cannot be broken down and their component parts are hard to utilize.
Until now:
Architecture for Humanity and Rubicon National Social Innovations invite entrants to create innovative ways of converting used mattresses into useful products.
The competition aims to encourage entrants to form groups capable of creating a consumer product, instructions detailing how to make the product, and a plan for production on a larger scale. Entrants must create designs that take into account the volume of mattress waste generated each year. Groups are encouraged to utilize local resources, including existing manufacturing facilities and other waste products.
Competition deadline: December 5 2008
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Wow, After spending hours researching the idea of entering this competition and finally looking at the grand prize of a meager $1000!!! This has to be a joke! Come on folks, who in their right mind would spend their precious time trying to find a solution for a big problem when the time spent even if you won this comp. would amount too less than .25 cents per hour....I would rather stow away on the mattress factory ship departing Oakland and heading to china, where I could make 32 cents working 12 hours a day in the factory!
Please who ever is sponsoring this competition, you could at least add a couple zero's to the prize amount too show you really care about the environment and what happens with these old mattresses!