CalRecycle did not establish goals for the mattress program in three critical areas: increasing convenience for consumers, reducing illegal dumping of mattresses, and ensuring consistency with the State’s overall approach to waste management, which prioritizes source reduction.
Although required to develop state goals for mattress recycling by January 2018, CalRecycle set goals that focus on only those mattresses that the Mattress Council’s contractors collect. CalRecycle has not imposed penalties to ensure that mattress retailers comply with the requirements of the recycling act.
We estimated that the potential total penalties in five cases we reviewed would have ranged from roughly $280,000 to about $2.8 million. Although the Mattress Council has collected millions of dollars in revenue from California consumers to operate the mattress program, it has not used all the funds to ensure that the mattress program achieves the program goals.
The Mattress Council has accumulated net assets of more than $42 million. The Mattress Council cannot demonstrate that it met key objectives of the mattress program.
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