RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS Assessing the Greenhouse Gas Savings Potential of Extended Producer Responsibility for Mattresses and Boxsprings in the United States Roland Geyer, Brandon Kuczenski, and Matthew Trujillo Keywords: Summary end-of-life management extended producer responsibility Extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation in the United States, which currently (EPR) only exists on the state level, now includes three mattress EPR acts, which intend to shift industrial ecology the financial and operational burden of mattress end-of-life (EOL) management away from life cycle assessment (LCA) local and state government. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the original mattresses and boxsprings objective behind EPR is to reduce the environmental life cycle impacts of products. This reuse and recycling article therefore quantifies the greenhouse gas (GHG) savings potential of mattress and boxspring recycling and reuse in the United States and also discusses labor implications Supporting information is available and mattress design issues. We find that all three acts are unlikely to generate redesign on the JIE Web site incentives, but are expected to dramatically increase mattress collection and recycling. The collection and recycling of all 35 million EOL mattress and boxspring units estimated to reach the end of their lives in the United States every year would generate in the order of 10,000 jobs and GHG savings between 1 and 1.5 million metric tonnes. Introduction liberate firms and retailers from their individual take-back and recovery obligations, which also set off the ongoing controversy The term and concept of extended producer responsibility about individual versus collective responsibility (Lindhqvist (EPR) combines the ideas of pollution prevention, life cycle and Lifset 2003; Van Rossem et al. 2006). The first European thinking, and incentive-based environmental policy and was Union (EU)-wide environmental regulation using EPR princi- introduced just over 20 years ago (Lindhqyist and Lidgren 1990; ples was the End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive 2000/53/EC Lifset 1993). Whereas it can be applied to the entire product life from 2000, which, among other things, sets progressive recovery cycle, it is predominantly discussed and applied in the context and recycling targets. Probably the most widely discussed pro- of product end-of-life (EOL) management (Van Rossem et al. ducer responsibility regulation is the European Waste Electrical 2006). and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive 2002/96/EC from The original German Packaging Ordinance (VerpackV) 2002, which has led to e-waste regulation in a host of other from 1991 is probably the earliest environmental regulation countries. The dominant feature of the WEEE Directive is that that includes EPR principles. The ordinance requires producers it sets collection, recovery, and recycling targets for different to either take back their packaging materials or join the Duales categories of e-waste. System Deutschland (DSD), the first producer responsibility Although EPR has been widely discussed in North America organization (PRO) worldwide. The purpose of the DSD is to for as long as it has existed, it has only recently come into the Address correspondence to: Roland Geyer, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5131, USA. Email: [email protected] © 2015 by Yale University DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12313 Editor managing review: Annie Levasseur Volume 00, Number 0 www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jie Journal of Industrial Ecology 1 RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS focus of regulators and policy makers. One confounding fac- manufacturers, created the Mattress Recycling Council (MRC), tor in the United States has been an ongoing discussion about which will implement all three mattress EPR acts (MRC 2015). semantics, including the question of whether there are signifi- It is noteworthy that the three acts institute collective, rather cant differences between EPR, extended product responsibility, than individual, producer responsibility, allocate financial re- and product stewardship (Geyer 2004; McKerlie et al. 2006). sponsibility directly to the purchasers of mattresses, and refrain This article has no ambition to contribute to this discussion from setting any EPR system parameters, such as the fee or col- and will use the acronym EPR to denote extended producer lection, recovery, or recycling rates. Some implications of these responsibility, the most popular of the three terms. choices will be discussed below. A predecessor of the Rhode In the United States, EPR legislation is currently only Island bill supported individual producer responsibility, and a pursued at the state level. Typical product categories subject predecessor of the California bill specified financial and oper- to state-level EPR legislation are batteries, paint, electronics, ational parameters (SB 2399, SB 1118). It is also noteworthy and mercury-containing products (PSI 2013). Five years ago, that all three EPR acts essentially follow ISPA’s proposal for California adopted an EPR framework and is now coordinating federal legislation (BedTimes 2012b). its previous and new product stewardship initiatives under this EPR legislation is frequently motivated by a desire to shift framework (CIWMB 2008). One product category that has re- the financial burden of product EOL management away from cently attracted the attention of legislators in several states is local and state government. However, it is important to keep that of mattresses and boxsprings (PSI 2011; BedTimes 2012a). in mind that the original objective behind EPR is to reduce the As with upholstered furniture, mattresses and boxsprings gener- environmental life cycle impacts of products (Lindhqvist 1998). ate several waste management problems, including the issue of The design and implementation of EPR legislation should thus illegal dumping. Their bulkiness makes them difficult to handle be supported by a thorough understanding of the environmen- during waste pickup and transport, their low density makes them tal impacts and benefits of EOL product collection and recov- undesirable landfill material, and their springs have a tendency ery. Quantitative environmental assessments of mattress and to disable landfill and transfer station equipment (ISPA 2004). boxspring recycling or reuse are sparse. A rare exception is a Though the recycling of mattresses and boxsprings is techni- study by Glew and colleagues (2012), which conducted a hybrid cally feasible and straightforward, its economics is relatively greenhouse gas (GHG) life cycle assessment (LCA) of high-end poor and has not been able to create a self-sustaining recycling pocket spring mattresses from one specific UK manufacturer. infrastructure (O’Brien 2012). Most mattress recyclers in North The study is based on luxury mattresses with a retail price of America are nonprofits and rely on a US$6 to US$15 tipping several thousand dollars and therefore not directly applicable fee per mattress, owing to the fact that the market for reclaimed to mattress and boxspring recycling in the United States. materials is volatile (BedTimes 2010). Regarding mattress re- The objective of this article is to provide a robust quantifica- cycling, the EU is trailing the United States. Of the 30 million tion of the energy and GHG implications of different EOL man- mattresses estimated to reach EOL every year in the EU, 60% agement methods for mattresses and boxsprings in the United are landfilled and 40% are incinerated (BedTimes 2010; Hild- States. It also briefly discusses the labor implications of increased ing Anders 2014). In the United States, the majority of EOL collection and reprocessing, as well as some product design is- mattresses and boxsprings also end up in landfill, which has sues. It does, however, not study which exact EPR approaches prompted several state legislatures to propose EPR legislation. and mechanisms would bring about which changes in mattress As of fall 2013, there are now three U.S. states with mattress and boxspring design and EOL management. A related analysis EPR legislation. Connecticut’s Public Act No. 13-42, Rhode for California only has been conducted for, and published by, Island’s Health & Safety Code 23-90, and California’s Used the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recov- Mattress Recovery and Recycling Act (SB 254) all use fairly ery (CalRecycle 2012). different language, but are very similar in substance (PA No. 13-42 2013, Code 23-90 2013, SB254 2013). All three enact the establishment of a state-wide PRO, which is charged with Methods and Data the following: r Analytical Framework Determine the size of a flat fee to be added to the mattress The study uses both types of LCA methodology, economic price r input-output LCA (EIO-LCA) and process-based LCA, to es- Set up a collection and recycling infrastructure funded by timate the GHG emission reductions and energy savings that the fee r could be achieved through increased reuse and recycling of Establish, and periodically review and revise, performance mattresses and boxsprings. measures, such as collection and recycling targets r The cradle-to-gate GHG emissions and energy demand of Submit annual reports to a specified governmental orga- mattress and boxspring manufacturing are calculated with the nization, which oversees the operation of the PRO and U.S. national EIO-LCA model developed by Carnegie Mel- its EPR program lon University, which can be found at: www.eiolca.net. This