An innovative Ministry of Justice (MoJ) scheme for purchasing mattresses and pillows for prisons has won two prestigious awards. 
The department’s Zero Waste Mattress Project won the Guardian newspaper’s Public Service Award for Sustainability on Tuesday, a week after it took the procurement gong at the 2009 Civil Service Awards.
The project involves replacing old and worn mattresses and pillows, which are difficult and costly to dispose of, with new, higher specification ones, the overall cost of which includes disposal. The MoJ expects this to achieve annual savings of £1.2 million.
Since bedding for the 85,000 offenders in UK prisons has to be highly fire retardant, as well as containing no parts that could be used for self harm, suicide, concealment of contraband or harm to others, it could not simply be incinerated. The Prison Service was binning 40,000 used mattresses and pillows each year – the equivalent of 31 double-decker buses going to landfill.
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