Artist’s Journal:

The biggest problem in the landfill isn’t what you’d think. It isn’t clothes, school lunches, or medical waste.

Do you know what it is? Can you guess?

It’s mattresses.

The manager explained to me that mattresses take up an inordinate amount of space in a landfill. They are made of space-aged gels and foams that take eons to break down, and while they decompose, they off-gas. The smell of the chemical they release is so strong that they have to create management strategies just for that one thing.

Some cities have mattress recycling plants, but we don’t—not yet, at least. This means that hundreds and thousands of mattresses are dumped into our landfill on a yearly basis, where they resist compaction, create unhealthy scents, and decompose into mystery chemicals.

This is a problem for which I—and the entire department—do not have a solution. What type of mattress material would be environmentally conscious and would not fill up precious airspace in the landfill while decomposing? Solving this problem should win someone a Nobel prize.