By Skyler Baldwin  |  A local mattress manufacturer and retailer has helped to keep more than 125,000 mattresses out of landfills through aggressive recycling and disposal procedures.

K.C. Rennie told the Charleston City Paper last week that his company, The Charleston Mattress, started Bedshred six years ago after seeing the impact that discarded mattresses had on landfills.  It now works with  Nine Lives Recycling in Pamplico, S.C., where the materials are stored and processed. 

“We started BedShred mainly as a way to dispose of old mattresses whenever we delivered new ones through The Charleston Mattress, just because we didn’t want to keep taking them to the landfill,” Rennie said. “They’re torn down, destroyed and never used in new mattresses — the foam becomes carpet padding and the metal goes to the scrapyard and the wood disappears real quick.”