COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — Colorado ranks among the worst states when it comes to diverting waste from landfills. But a Commerce City nonprofit is trying to help, by continuing a compassionate approach to recycling in the face of market challenges.
Spring Back Colorado has diverted roughly 11 million pounds from landfills since 2012. To do that, they break down nearly 6,000 mattresses every month at their warehouse.
Each day, workers slash, tear apart and crush mattresses to separate out foam, cotton, steel, wood and ticking, which is the outer layer of fabric covering a mattress.
But processing these materials is only a small part of their mission, often surprising customers.
“Once they hear the other side of what we do here, besides recycling, it kind of just blows them away,” said Robert Dainko, who has worked for Spring Back for more than three years answering phone calls and scheduling pick ups and drop offs of mattresses.
“You're supporting disenfranchised men and women here that need a second chance,” he said.
Spring Back hires people who have completed or are enrolled in a drug and alcohol recovery program, sober living facility or a transitional home.
People like Dainko, who said he made some bad choices and landed homeless. He was struggling with substance abuse, had warrants out for his arrest and wondered each day where he would sleep and where his next meal would come from.
“One day, I woke up and just said, I can't do this anymore. I can't live homeless,” he said.
Dainko sought help from a recovery program in Aurora called Wellness Court, which connected him with services like housing and treatment.
Once he was on steadier footing, he found Spring Back.
“Spring Back has supported me all the way,” Dainko said.
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A mission that’s held strong for more than a decade. Christopher Conway opened Spring Back after volunteering with the Denver Rescue Mission and seeing how many disenfranchised people were looking for steady work. After his death last year, Conway’s son Peter took over as Spring Back’s president.
“We have very similar hearts for this type of work,” Conway said. After more than five years working with Spring Back, he said what keeps him going is “the people, first and foremost.”
But challenges are growing.
“The state of Colorado, we really pride ourselves in being a green state and environmentally conscious forward state. But we don't really have a lot of these systems in place to facilitate something like this,” Conway said.
While Colorado-based recyclers accept wood and steel, Spring Back has to load the rest of the materials stripped from mattresses into trucks and ship it out of state.
"We make 30,000 pounds of foam almost every week, and we have to send it to California or Texas,” Conway said.
But now, mountains of foam are piling up in their warehouse.
“Our foam partner recently, that we've worked with for eight years, just said: 'We're full. We have enough foam. We're not going to take any more from you guys,” Conway said.
Most of the foam from old mattresses is used to make carpets, but a slow down in the housing market is making it harder for recyclers to use up all of the available materials, according to the Colorado Sun.
A Texas recycler recently agreed to take roughly 30,000 pounds of foam per week from Spring Back, Conway said. That will help keep newly stripped foam out of their warehouse but it won’t make a dent in the existing stockpile.
Conway said other mattress recyclers tell him they’re facing the same problem. He is now considering sending materials even further, perhaps to Canada or Mexico.
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Without a market for materials like foam, Conway said the nonprofit is facing a “big lost cost right now.”
Spring Back is self-funded, and relies on support through grants and donations.
“There's not a huge piggy bank of money to just draw into,” Conway said.
But he isn’t giving up on his father’s vision.
“I know how much he loved every single [employee] out there, and now I get to walk in those steps,” he said.
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And employees like Dainko are eager to keep Spring Back afloat.
“I was at the bottom,” he said. But through steady work with a positive influence in the community, he’s turned around his life. “I actually bought my first house seven months ago. I'm a taxpayer now,” he said. “I have family back, and I'm just so grateful to Spring Back.”
“If I can help somebody else, I want to do that,” he said.
