Bulky Bob’s

Each year in the UK around 7.5 million mattresses are thrown away, with 75% going straight to landfill, while the remainder are dismantled for parts and recycled or incinerated.

If those mattresses were stacked on top of each other the pile would be 155 times taller than The Shard in London, the UK’s tallest building. What is more, it is estimated that the planet-heating CO2 generated in the production of those mattresses is around 600,000 tonnes*, the equivalent to driving to the Moon and back more than 4,000 times**.

Bulky Bob’s has developed a manual cleaning process using UV light and infra-red heat. Operated by up to six staff, it cleans around 4,000 mattresses each year, which are sold at Bulky Bob’s furniture shop and other distributors or given away as charitable donations.

Over the last three years, Bulky Bob's estimates that it has diverted thousands of mattresses from landfill and into the homes of people who need them.

Shaun said: “We are confident that by combining treatments and technologies we can produce mattresses that are of exceptionally quality. However, it takes a clunky manual process to clean them which means we only do a fraction of what we could. We recognised the need to automate it.”

* Based on an average mattress depth of 10 inches, 7,500,000 mattresses is 48,387 metres high if stacked on top of one another. The Shard in London, the UK’s tallest building, is 309 metres high, so 7,500,000 mattresses is the equivalent height of 156 Shards.

** The overall average impact of the lifecycle of a mattress is 80kg CO2 per mattress according to a study called the 'Furniture Carbon Footprinting' by the Furniture Industry Research Association (FIRA), the UK research association which serves the furniture industry.

Automation using modular robotics and control technologies will transport the mattresses along the stages of the cleaning process including a steam clean, ultra-violet irradiation, ozone, and infrared drying.

Meanwhile an imaging system will assess and monitor the effectiveness and whether there is any viable biological material still contaminating the mattress, before it is approved or passed through the cleaning process again.

A barcode system will ensure inventory control all the way along the supply chain.

Ultimately a large data set will be created for analysis for continual process improvement, quality management and process optimisation.

As the system is rolled out to other locations, a network will be created with cloud-based central control and monitoring. Data can then be analysed to maintain quality, improve processes, and run predictive maintenance scheduling to reduce operational failures.

The productivity gain will be significant. The automated system will enable Bulky Bob’s to ultraclean about 150 mattresses per day – taking it from 4,000 a year to 80,000.

The system will divert staff from the manual cleaning roles to collecting more furniture, and upskill staff to quality management and machine operation.

Data capture will add a level of quality management and stock tracking not currently in place. It will also create a data set whereby Bulky Bob’s can refine processing requirements for different makes of mattress, different degrees of soiling and different contaminants.

By reducing the number of mattresses in circulation Bulky Bob’s is contributing to a significant potential reduction in the CO2 emissions produced in the manufacturing process. The 80,000 mattresses Bulky Bob’s could process per year is the equivalent of enough CO2 to fill Wembley Stadium 40 times***.

***Based on the calculation that 1 tonne of CO2 is equivalent to 556.2m³ and the capacity of Wembley Stadium being 1,139,100 m³, 80,000 mattress at 80kg CO2 per mattress is equal to 39 Wembleys.