'People don't follow the rules': Mattresses litter Providence's streets. Who hauls them off?

PROVIDENCE – Most weeks, if the weather is good, City Councilman James Taylor goes hunting in his neighborhood, Ward 8.

His quarry? Mattresses.

The habit started around 2017, when Taylor took his pickup truck out and gathered up what residents just dumped or left out, not having the more than $50 it costs to properly dispose of a mattress and box spring through Waste Management's scheduled pickup service. Aside from tidying up the neighborhood, Taylor discovered it was a solid campaign strategy.

"I'm known as the mattress man," Taylor told The Providence Journal. "That’s actually how I won my election, to be honest with you."

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Mattresses as political strategy

Since then, Taylor estimates he has picked up 1,000 mattresses. And he's not the only one who's used them to score political points. Councilman Oscar Vargas said mattresses were at the top of his agenda when he was running for his seat in 2021, and he urged locals not to use "streets as your trash bin."

Councilman Justin Roias deals with the same issue. This week, he posted a gallery of photos on Instagram showing numerous mattresses discarded around his neighborhood, which he had to call the Department of Public Works to fetch. Roias said he phones the department weekly.

"Although this issue probably isn't uncommon in cities, I've noticed a significant psychological impact from the illegal dumping of mattresses in my neighborhood," he said. "I believe the visual blight caused by dumped mattresses can contribute to feelings of neglect and disempowerment among residents, which I fear can further erode neighborhood cohesion and discourage civic engagement."

'People don't follow the rules'

If you want to know how mattress disposal works, there's no better person to ask than Al Giuliano, associate director of DPW's environmental division. Giuliano helps run the city's mattress depot at 700 Allens Ave., which accepts used mattresses free of charge.

In total, Giuliano said the depot either recycled or disposed of 10,000 mattresses last year at a cost of $2,000 per ton for those that went to the landfill. But he knows a lot of people won't bother bringing them to the depot in the first place.

"This is city is unlike any other city in the state," Giuliano said. "There’s a lot of dumping. People don’t follow the rules."

What is the right way to dispose of a mattress?

There are several ways, good and bad, to scrap a mattress.

• Bring one to the depot on Saturday anytime from 7 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. You can drop off mattresses in any condition for free. The catch? The max is two per resident, and that resident must show a driver's license.

• Another legal way is to bag your mattress and schedule a pickup with Waste Management. But that's for clean mattresses only, and it'll cost you $27 apiece, so double that if you also want to trash your box spring. Anything with urine, blood or bed bugs won't be picked up, and you'll have to figure out how to get your money back.

The many wrong ways to ditch a mattress

The wrong ways are multitude. Giuliano said illegal dumpers drive into Providence from other cities and leave piles of junk at dead ends or in business areas. Scammers may even offer residents $150 or $200 to haul their junk away, then secretly dump it elsewhere.

"It's like, what the heck?" Giuliano said. "Where are these things coming from?"

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Other residents get hit with $50 fines for simply leaving their mattress at the curb, perhaps thinking a trash truck will pick it up. (Mattresses are not picked up on trash day. Waste Management picks them up only on Mondays. DPW handles pickups of more than three bulky items.)

And others will simply store mattresses in their backyards, Giuliano said, providing the perfect breeding ground for vermin. He recalled one such case in Silver Lake.

"They threw a mattress down and rats just ran out of it," Giuliano said. "If you can believe that."

Higher fines for illegal dumping might be on the way

Taylor said he's working with Rep. Scott Slater and Sen. Josh Miller to push legislation that would boost illegal dumping fines from $500 to $1,000. That wouldn't apply to the average resident who leaves a mattress on a curb, but to those who collect a bundle of items and dump them.

"It's not enough," Taylor said of the current fines. "Even if we catch them. It's tough to catch them."

For those who can't get to the mattress depot, DPW hosts periodic offsite collections in neighborhoods. On those occasions, staff drive through neighborhoods, mark locations of abandoned mattresses and pick them up for free.

"No ticket. Nothing issued," Giuliano said. "It's a pass, and it's a positive thing for everyone involved."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: How to dispose of mattresses in Providence - the right way