Colm O'Regan: I was looking up what Eco Mattress do to the mattress — it’s practically pornography

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Pic: Denis Minihane.

I looked out and there it was, gone. The mattress.

The relief! You can’t have a mattress outside your house for long. This used to be because if the mattress stayed too long, before long someone else would have dumped more stuff on it. 

A mattress says: “Law and order have broken down. Please bring your old sofa”.

That is still the case but the risk now is that as soon as a soaking wet mattress is slumped outside your house like a drunk in a white North Face, the Google Street Van will be around within the hour and record it for posterity. 

I swear, every single Google Street View update, our house looks like it’s on Benefits Street.

This time around, Google Street missed their window because the good people at Eco Mattress Recycling sprang into action. And put some action into the springs. 

For a modest fee, they drove over and put the mattress effortlessly into their mattress truck. 

(One day, when there’s time, we need to talk about the mental health benefits of knowing someone with a van. A van is a triumph of the possible.)

Anyway, back to mattresses. 

I was looking up what Eco Mattress do to the mattress to recycle it. For a man my age it’s practically pornography. 

They ‘fillet’ the mattress. It’s sliced open, the springs are peeled out like little springing metal fish bones, and stacked ready to be turned into steel. The padding is sterilized and reused as padding in the furniture industry. 

If they got more of it (and that’s where punters could help) they could send it to be turned into underlay. 

UNDERLAY. There comes a time in a man's life when a larger-than-average number of his conversations have the word underlay in them.

But the very idea that millions of mattresses can be recycled... it’s wonderful. DON’T YOU FIND IT WONDERFUL? What’s the matter, hun? You don’t look like you’re enjoying my mattress-recycling anecdotes.

As it becomes clear we’re simply digging up too much of the planet and burning it or throwing it next to a lake, I get inordinately excited about any new recycling frontier.

Half a million mattresses are dumped and incinerated (apart from the ones in bogs) in Ireland every year. That’s half a million conversations about underlay. So I need any bits of good news I find.

I don’t get as much pleasure as I used to in going to the dump. 

There is still the relief of finally throwing a broken Hoover into the WEEE cage. 

There is the panic at thinking I’ve accidentally thrown in the car keys into the polystyrene foam skip. 

But mainly there is a bit of sadness at just how much shit we’re still throwing away. The stuff that’s in the bulky waste skips. 

And when I’m at the dump in Tramore Valley Park in Cork, there’s the puzzlement at all the teddies tied to the fence. 

Seriously, you should go just to look at that. How you feel about it really depends on the weather. 

On a sunny day, it looks like they’re all spectators at a teddy bear football match. But when it’s raining, it looks like they are captured rebel teddies strung up as an example to any other plush toys who might get ideas. A teddy Spartacus.

When I’ve finished telling the guests about Cork dump’s teddies though, I know what I’ll be talking about at the next wedding I’m invited to.

You’ll see me at the in-between bit. Standing in an Irish stately home that once hosted a Cromwellian function, I’ll drain my third prosecco, finish the little scone and launch into a description of what the hotel should do with its old mattresses.

And underlay. Lots of underlay.