The short answer
Mattress recycling gets discussed as though it were a product you can order. It is not. It is an outcome, and the thing that determines it is condition on arrival. A dry, intact mattress separates into foam, fiber, steel and wood — four materials with four destinations. A soaked or mildewed one is a single heavy object with one destination.
What you pay is the removal, and the price does not change either way: twin $82, full $94, queen $103, king $114, box spring $92, mattress and box spring together $143. The per-visit minimum is $75.
What is actually inside a mattress
A conventional innerspring mattress is a steel coil unit, a foam or fiber comfort layer, a wood or composite frame edge, and a quilted cover. A foam mattress is layers of different densities. A box spring is a wood frame, a steel grid and a fabric wrap.
All of that is separable and most of it has a use — steel is straightforwardly recyclable, foam gets reprocessed, wood gets chipped. What kills the process is contamination. Water is the main one. Once foam has absorbed water it is heavy, it grows things, and it is no longer a feedstock.
Why Raleigh mattresses fail the test
Two very local reasons.
The crawlspace. Houses here sit on crawlspaces rather than basements, and the crawlspace is where the spare mattress from the last upgrade goes. It is uncooled, it is ventilated to outside air, and a Piedmont summer runs humid from May into September. A wrapped mattress under a house absorbs that steadily. After two summers it smells. After three it is not a recycling candidate.
The curb. A mattress set out for a collection later in the week meets a Piedmont afternoon thunderstorm, which arrives with about twenty minutes of notice from June onward. It is then roughly twice the weight and the foam is done. Whatever recycling route it had before it went out, it does not have now.
The prices
| Item | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Mattress — Twin | $82 |
| Mattress — Full / Double | $94 |
| Mattress — Queen | $103 |
| Mattress — King / Cal King | $114 |
| Box Spring (Any Size) | $92 |
| Mattress + Box Spring Set | $143 |
| Adjustable Bed Base (Motorized) | $118 |
| Waterbed | $167 |
Those are flat and include carrying it out of the bedroom, the transport and the disposal. There is no recycling surcharge, no environmental fee and no charge for taking it down a staircase in an older ranch inside the Beltline.
Keep it dry and keep it indoors
The single most useful thing you can do is not move the mattress outside until the truck is there. Leave it in the bedroom. It is not in your way for one more day, and the day it spends on the driveway in Cary during a July storm is the day its options close.
If it has to wait somewhere, a garage beats a carport and a carport beats a lawn. Bag it in the room rather than outside — the bag is there to keep what is in the mattress in and the rain out, and putting it on after the mattress has been dragged through the house achieves neither.
Pollen season and the porch
Late March and April in the Triangle mean pine pollen on every horizontal surface. People air out mattresses and upholstery on porches and decks in spring, which is exactly the wrong few weeks for it here. A mattress left on a screened porch through pollen season comes back in yellow and stays smelling of outside.
If you are trying to preserve a guest mattress rather than dispose of it, spring airing is a Raleigh trap. Do it in October.
May in west Raleigh is the volume spike
When NC State empties in May, the streets off Hillsborough Street, Avent Ferry and Gorman Street produce more discarded mattresses in about ten days than the rest of the Raleigh year combined — mostly twin and twin XL beds bought for a single lease. A large share of them sit outside for several days first, which is why so few of them end up recycled.
If you are a landlord turning units, booking a date in advance is worth more than anything else you can do for the outcome. A twin at $82 collected from inside the unit has options. The same twin after four days on the sidewalk does not.
What we actually do with it
Loads get sorted rather than tipped indiscriminately, and materials that have a route get sent down it. We are not going to promise you a specific percentage or a specific facility on a web page, because that varies by load and by day and an invented number would be worse than no number. What we will say plainly is that condition is the lever you control, and the price is the same either way: $103 for a queen, $143 for a set, $75 minimum per visit.
Frequently asked questions
Does it cost extra to have a mattress recycled instead of dumped?
No. There is one price for removal — $103 for a queen, $82 for a twin, $94 for a full, $114 for a king — and no recycling surcharge or environmental fee on top. What determines whether a mattress can be recycled is its condition, not what you pay.
Can a wet mattress be recycled?
Generally not. Once the foam has absorbed water it is heavy, it grows mold and it is no longer usable as a feedstock. That is the argument for keeping the mattress inside until the truck arrives rather than putting it at the curb days ahead of a Piedmont storm week.
My mattress has been in the crawlspace for years. Is it still worth anything?
Probably not, and you will usually know by the smell. Crawlspaces here are uncooled and ventilated to outside air, and Raleigh summers are humid from May into September. Two or three summers under the house is normally enough to end both the donation and the recycling routes. Removal is $103 for a queen regardless.
Should I bag it myself?
If it is stained, damaged or you suspect anything living in it, yes — and bag it in the bedroom before it moves, not on the driveway afterwards. For an ordinary dry mattress you do not need to do anything. We carry it out as it is.
What about the box spring and the frame?
A box spring is $92 on its own, or $143 covers a mattress and box spring together. Add a twin, full or queen bed frame at $126 and the whole bed is $143 + $126 = $269 on one visit.