How to Dispose of a Mattress

Hercules and I were recently out for our afternoon constitutional, taking in the scents, sights and sounds of the neighborhood , as only one strolling with a dog can do, when we came across a mattress, bedframe and bedding stashed by a public trash bin on a busy street corner.

With the NYC Department of Sanitation rules being enforced as of January 3rd, 2011 people are trying to avoid the $100 fine AND the bother of wrapping their mattress in plastic before hauling to the curb. This mattress was heavily infested, as was the bedframe and the bedding dumped in the street. If you look at the picture you can clearly see egg casings, blood-stains, bug fecal matter and other grossness. I counted at least 30 adult bed bugs on the outside of this mattress before I got bored. So let us consider for a moment the process of disposing of this mattress; they dragged all this buggy stuff through their house, out past their neighbor’s homes, and into the street, with bed bugs jumping off at every turn. Chances are, the room is still harboring a significant population and now they are in the rest of the apartment along with the hallway and stairway by their neighbor’s apartments. Within a few months, the new bedding will be just as infested as this example and the bed bugs that they have so inconsiderately shared with the people of their neighborhood may be creating issues of their own.

I was pretty ticked off at this all-too-common example of bad manners and would have come home in a bad mood except that we soon came across another example of infested mattresses being thrown out.

These ones were actually wrapped in encasements and so far less likely to pose a danger to the owner or their neighbors. I am surmising that the owners of these mattresses had completed bed bug treatment, otherwise the mattress would be in a $10 plastic bag and not a $100 encasement. Extra credit points for these folk for not bringing new bedding into an infested environment. Let’s hope we see more of this thoughtful behavior and not just because of the $100 fine, but because we care about our community.