Dive summary:

• A new test program by the Navy will send thousands of old mattresses to a recycling plant in South Carolina rather than the landfill.
• The Navy has discovered that along with being more environmentally friendly, recycling the springs and foam instead of sending them to the landfill is actually cheaper as well, recycling the mattresses from the last ship alone saved them $12,000.
• Through the end of the pilot program, 13,000 mattresses will be recycled, saving more than 100,000 cubic feet of space in a landfill.

From the article:

When the USS Enterprise returns home from its final deployment, one of the first items that will be stripped from the aircraft carrier will be the thousands of mattresses its sailors have worn out over the past few years.

But unlike other ships the Navy has decommissioned, these mattresses won’t be heading to a local landfill following the Dec. 1 inactivation. ...