Carpenter bed award

Richard Hoy (left) and Geoff Sykes, from the Ministry of Justice, receive their award.

AN Oldham firm has helped the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) achieve a double award.

The MOJ has won two prestigious awards thanks to the joint initiative with Carpenter, one of the world’s largest foam producers, to recycle old prison mattresses in a world-first scheme.

The initiative, which began in July, 2008, has earned the MOJ the Procurement Award at the Civil Service Awards 2009 in addition to the Innovation and Progress: Sustainabil-ity Award at The Guardian Public Services Awards, 2009.

The awards were given for the ‘Zero waste mattress project’, which involves Carpenter, based at the Bee Mill, Shaw Road, Royton, collecting old prison mattresses before granulating and recycling these to produce luxury carpet underlay. This is sold all over the UK and mainland Europe.

Richard Hoy, procurement category manager for the MOJ, said: “Carpenter made all this possible. We were sending approximately 30 double decker buses worth of prison mattresses a year to landfill.”

In excess of 50,000 new mattresses and a similar number of new pillows are provided every year to prisons in the UK leaving near to 40,000 old items for disposal.

Mr Hoy added: “This unique system recycles rather than sending it all to landfill. It is expected to save the prison service more than £1million per annum in disposal costs.

“The award judges’ feedback was all very positive and commended the innovative native of the scheme.”

Carpenter product manager Ian Patterson said: “This is the first scheme of its kind and it’s great to have assisted our client in establishing a system that has gone on to win such accredited recognition.”

Mr Patterson was involved in the scheme from the start, co-ordinating the recycling proposal and compiling data to enable it to go ahead.