Remembering to recycle your paper bags and plastic bottles is no new task, but your mattress? Now residents will have the opportunity to recycle those, too.

The Board of Selectmen voted Jan. 19 to join the Connecticut Mattress Recycling Program. Town Engineer Jim Portley presented the plan to selectmen, saying there has been an increased need in town for this type of service.

“This idea of recycling mattresses at first seems a little odd,” he said. “But it is a program that has been pushed by recycling agencies for quite a while. It came into effect this past July 1 under state laws.”

Portley said the issue came to his attention shortly after Christmas.

“Normally you may have a situation where 10 or 12 mattresses come in a week and then the next week you have none,” he said. “I guess after Christmas there were a lot of them. It is a bigger issue than I thought it was.”

While the town isn’t required to participate in the program, Portley said there have been some issues trying to recycle mattresses at the current town facilities.

“Over the last couple of months I have had a lot of push back from both the folks that handle our bulky waste, which is where the mattresses would usually go, and also from the people that take the trash that goes into the hopper. A few mattresses have slipped into there and they don’t break up very easily,” he said.

After some deliberation, Portley decided the program could be beneficial to the town and it comes at no cost.

“They provide under this program a container that we can deliver up to 30 or 40 mattresses at a time,” he said. “Residents would come in and bring their mattresses to the Transfer Station.”

The container will be located at the Transfer Station and residents will be required to stack the mattress themselves. The container will not be open to companies looking to dispose of mattresses.

“It is a good way for people to recycle,” he said.