It is perfectly legal to spritz, recover, and resell used mattresses in New York. They have to be sanitized and labeled properly.

There is no way to “sanitize” used mattresses to reliably remove bed bugs. There is no spray which will kill all the bed bugs and eggs in a used mattress.

Perhaps the only possibility for reliably removing bed bugs would be using heat (over 120 F for 3+ hours) or Vikane gas (which — if done correctly, and it is not always done correctly — should be 100% effective, but would probably raise the cost of refurbished mattresses to the point where no one would buy them).

The recycling of mattresses is shameful and the New York government must put an end to this practice which spreads bed bugs to so many.

And don’t think you’re safe if you never buy a used mattress. If your hotel, school, granddaughter’s day care, child’s friend’s parents, neighbor, building employee, or the person who sat in the movie theater before you bought a used mattress, that’s enough to give you bed bugs.

• inspectors find 600 unsanitized mattresses at Charlotte, N.C. used furniture store
• Bed bugs in Sweden: Ikea, used mattresses, and the spread of vägglus
• New York City is behind in the bed bug wars
• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture

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Her interviewee, Chip Giller of Grist.org, suggested going to Craigslist or freecycle.org to offer your mattress to others.

Grist says in the related article their website,

In most areas of the U.S., you can’t recycle your mattresses, and they’re even hard to give away — charities like Goodwill often refuse to take them. Old TVs can be tough to unload too. But if your items are still in functional condition, consider that other R, “reuse,” instead of just “recycle.”

One of the best ways to give new life to your old belongings is through the Freecycle Network, an online community with chapters all over the U.S. and around the world, through which people offer up items they no longer want and other people happily snap them up. (Read an article about Freecycle’s founding.) The online bulletin board Craigslist, which also has hundreds of local versions, has a section where you can offer things up for free too. You can get rid of just about any usable item (and some items you didn’t even think were usable) via Freecycle and Craigslist, and you can find great free stuff too.

While this may seem like a good idea, these days mattresses you see curbside (and there is one pictured in the Grist article linked to above) are often there because people had bed bugs and threw them out. While tossing out mattresses and furniture is not usually necessary (or even a good idea), it is a really common reaction to discovering bed bugs.

While Giller and Viera might assume that people would not offer their bed bug-infested mattresses on these online communities, the sad fact is that you can easily have bed bugs without knowing it–a significant percentage of people do not react to their bites. (I’ve heard estimates from 30% to 70%, but I don’t think there is good data on this yet.) Mattresses and furniture items do not always look infested. And bed bugs are spreading at an alarming rate, all over the US, from New York to Cincinnati, San Francisco to Boston, as well as in other countries.

This is probably why Goodwill does not accept used mattresses. (It’s likely they have enough trouble keeping bed bugs out of their shops and warehouses due to donations of furniture, clothing, and other items they do accept.)

While I strive to be as Green as I am able to be, I can tell you that getting bed bugs can do some serious damage to the environment, in the form of tossed out, destroyed, and replaced items, the use of plastic bags to isolate infested materials, the unusual amount of laundry, not to mention the spraying of pesticides.

A typical bedbugger’s XL ziplocs used during an infestation would probably make for a nice little landfill mountain. Bed bugs are not easy to get rid of, and spread easily to neighbors and others. One bed bug-infested mattress can lead to many people getting bed bugs and tossing out lots of otherwise-good stuff. So encouraging people to reuse and share mattresses, when this can spread bed bugs further, just does not make sense. The best thing for the environment would be for fewer people to get bed bugs in the first place.

Avoiding someone else’s Craigslist or Freecycle mattress is a good idea, because you cannot be certain it came from a bed bug free home, and neither can the person who donated it.

Caveat dumpster, and Caveat Craigslist.*

If you’d like to drop Today a note about this concern, as I did, you can email them: today@msnbc.com

*Yes, I know my Latin is not grammatical. It should be Caveat Dumpster-Diver. And Caveat Cragislist-user. But it’s catchy don’t you think? ,

Thanks to poorBugger for mentioning this segment in the Forums.

• Another Craigslist bed bug story
• bed bugs in the media: the Today Show, Tuesday morning
• How to spread bed bugs, in three easy steps!
• Craigslist bed bug warnings

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That means no mattresses, no sofas at the school in Quincy, Mass. The policy only applies to upholstered or soft furniture. As such, it does not mean students cannot bring in potentially-infested items, and the school recognizes that:

The insects spread by hitchhiking on things like luggage, clothing, beds and furniture. Locations with frequent turnover - like hotels, apartments, shelters and dorms - are vulnerable.

“It does not insulate us,” [Robert] Benjamin [Director of Residence Life] said about the ban on used furniture.  “We are trying to eliminate at least one variable.”

According to this article, most colleges that ban upholstered furniture do so because of fire hazards. ENC is banning them not because they have had any known bed bug outbreaks, but because a sister school in San Diego has had bed bug troubles. They are trying to learn from the other school’s experiences. (Good to hear!)

The policy is not unproblematic: besides the enormous cost to students this fall, if the policy continues, students would be buying new items every year for four years. This is a serious hardship and will probably mean many simply live in a much sparser way than prior generations of students.

• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

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A great “side table” for Bedbuggers: it’s really a thick glass vase turned upside down. At $60, it’s a cute idea and not a bad deal, and something you could use for other purposes as well. Side table? Bedside table? Enormous vase?!?

Check out Blueprint magazine for a photo and more information.

• Landlord won’t tell new tenants you have bed bugs?
• Some people share vacation photos…
• bed bug harborage inside a recessed screw hole
• close up bed bug with eggs

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Advocacy group fights bed bug outbreak

VANCOUVER - Community advocacy group the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users VANDU is trying to fight a massive outbreak of bedbugs in that city’s Downtown Eastside by gutting infested rooms.

The group’s Anne Livingston says residents have had six weeks notice to decide what to do with their possesions.

After the rooms are gutted, crews move in to spray with powerful chemicals to kill the bed bugs.
Livingston says residents get to bring 60 pounds of clothing out of their apartments that will be laundered and returned to them.

Anne Livingston and VANDU were mentioned here in a post in March. Last summer, they got a $51,000 government grant to provide a round of 2 PCO treatments for bed bugs in two badly infested Downtown Eastside hotels. The residents also got replacement furniture and beds.

The city commissioned a study which said 1/2 of those rooms were bed bug free two months later.

Although the funding was probably was not enough treatment to achieve a higher success rate (which would likely require more PCO visits in many cases), the VANDU activisits definitely know what they’re doing. Back in March, we quoted an article in which Livingston said,

“You really need to create a system whereby you can knock on the door, get a room prepped, get the spray guys in and come back in 10 days and do it again,” said Livingston.

“And then, the real project is to not have people pulling bedbug-infested garbage out of the alley into another place. This creates constant reinfection. So that’s why it needs to be a neighbourhood campaign.”

Livingstone said bedbugs are a growing problem everywhere in Vancouver, and trying to get rid of them in the city’s poorest neighbourhood is money well spent.

Education, as we keep saying, is key–for residents of every treated building, I might add, whether it’s an SRO hotel, an expensive NYC co-op apartment building, a tenement, or a homeless shelter. (Remember, I live in NYC, where well-to-do professionals shop at bohemian flea markets, and yuppies take used furniture off the curb.)

I applaud the work of Livingston and the other folks at VANDU. I know with more funding and support, they will be able to continue to make a huge difference in peoples’ lives.

I hate that community activists like VANDU and the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston have to step in, since I think we need more infrastructure and government assistance helping people get good bed bug treatment and supplies they need (from XL ziplocs to furniture). Both of these groups have had government funding, which is great. I just think they probably need a lot more.

And is anyone in NYC or San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, or anywhere else doing similar work? We’d love to hear about it.

• Vancouver community activists urge city to pay for bed bug eradication
• Government money needed to help people pay for bed bug treatment
• 80% of Single Room Occupancy units in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs; also Rensselaer Polytechnic’s dorms
• Itchy the Bed Bug: an Olympic Mascot for Vancouver

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But I am glad to see Maxwell at Apartmenttherapy.com covering this question as a poll. I think it’s great AT is taking bed bugs seriously. After all, it’s a home and design blog. Nothing, nothing screws up a home (or design scheme) like bed bugs.

Check it out.

• Homage to Catalonia, Props to Apartmenttherapy.com
• How did you deal with your bed bugs?
• ApartmentTherapy.com still does not quite get the bed bug thing
• Amanda at Apartmenttherapy.com, part 5

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So imagine my surprise to find that yesterday, Steven Kuritz published an article in the NY Times entitled “Not Buying It,” which celebrates the free-cycling frenzy out of the NYU dumpsters at the end of the semester. The article focuses both on this specific dumpster diving party, as well as a movement called “freeganism,” where people turn their backs on our consumerist society, recycle, and get things for free.

ON a Friday evening last month, the day after New York University’s class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of Third Avenue North, an N.Y.U. dormitory on Third Avenue and 12th Street. They had come to take advantage of the university’s end-of-the-year move-out, when students’ discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb.

New York has several colleges and universities, of course, but according to Janet Kalish, a Queens resident who was there that night, N.Y.U.’s affluent student body makes for unusually profitable Dumpster diving. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the gathering at the Third Avenue North trash bin quickly took on a giddy shopping-spree air, as members of the group came up with one first-class find after another.

Ben Ibershoff, a dapper man in his 20s wearing two bowler hats, dug deep and unearthed a Sharp television. Autumn Brewster, 29, found a painting of a Mediterranean harbor, which she studied and handed down to another member of the crowd.

Darcie Elia, a 17-year-old high school student with a half-shaved head, was clearly pleased with a modest haul of what she called “random housing stuff” a desk lamp, a dish rack, Swiffer dusters — which she spread on the sidewalk, drawing quizzical stares from passers-by.

Ms. Elia was not alone in appreciating the little things. “The small thrills are when you see the contents of someone’s desk and find a book of stamps,” said Ms. Kalish, 44, as she stood knee deep in the trash bin examining a plastic toiletries holder.

A few of those present had stumbled onto the scene by chance (including a janitor from a nearby homeless center, who made off with a working iPod and a tube of body cream), but most were there by design, in response to a posting on the Web site freegan.info.

This would all be great except for the bed bug factor.

I see a need for public education here. If anyone should already have been given some information about bed bugs, it’s the janitor from a homeless center. Or perhaps he does know about bed bugs, but thinks the relatively well-heeled NYU dorm inhabitants would not be afflicted. (But then, he doesn’t know much about bed bugs.)

According to the article,

The site (freegan.info), which provides information and listings for the small but growing subculture of anticonsumerists who call themselves “freegans” — the term derives from vegans, the vegetarians who forsake all animal products, as many freegans also do — is the closest thing their movement has to an official voice. And for those like Ms. Elia and Ms. Kalish, it serves as a guide to negotiating life, and making a home, in a world they see as hostile to their values.

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.

They dress in castoff clothes and furnish their homes with items found on the street; at freecycle.org, where users post unwanted items; and at so-called freemeets, flea markets where no money is exchanged. Some claim to hold themselves to rigorous standards. “If a person chooses to live an ethical lifestyle it’s not enough to be vegan, they need to absent themselves from capitalism,” said Adam Weissman, 29, who started freegan.info four years ago and is the movement’s de facto spokesman.

There are freegans all over the world, in countries as far afield as Sweden, Brazil, South Korea, Estonia and England (where much has been made of what The Sun recently called the “wacky new food craze” of trash-bin eating), and across the United States as well .

In Southern California, for example, “you can find just about anything in the trash, and on a consistent basis, too,” said Marko Manriquez, 28, who has just graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in media studies and is the creator of “Freegan Kitchen,” a video blog that shows gourmet meals being made from trash-bin ingredients. “This is how I got my futon, chair, table, shelves. And I’m not talking about beat-up stuff. I mean it’s not Design Within Reach, but it’s nice”

But New York City in particular — the financial capital of the world’s richest country — has emerged as a hub of freegan activity, thanks largely to Mr. Weissman’s zeal for the cause and the considerable free time he has to devote to it. (He doesn’t work and lives at home in Teaneck, N.J., with his father and elderly grandparents.)

Freegan.info sponsors organize Trash Tours that typically attract a dozen or more people, as well as feasts at which groups of about 20 people gather in apartments around the city to share food and talk politics.

Arrrggghhhhh! Trash tours!!! I wonder how many people have picked up bed bugs this way.

At the N.Y.U. Dorm Dive, as the event was billed, the consensus was that this year’s spoils weren’t as impressive as those in years past. Still, almost anything needed to decorate and run a household — a TV cart, a pillow, a file cabinet, a half-finished bottle of Jägermeister — was there for the taking, even if those who took them were risking health, safety and a $100 fine from the Sanitation Department.

Ms. Brewster and her mother, who had come from New Jersey, loaded two area rugs into their cart. Her mother, who declined to give her name, seemed to be on a search for laundry detergent, and was overjoyed to discover a couple of half-empty bottles of Trader Joe’s organic brand. (Free and organic is a double bonus). Nearby, a woman munched on a found bag of Nature’s Promise veggie fries.

As people stuffed their backpacks, Ms. Kalish, who organized the event (Mr. Weissman arrived later), demonstrated the cooperative spirit of freeganism, asking the divers to pass items down to people on the sidewalk and announcing her finds for anyone in need of, say, a Hoover Shop-Vac.

The food stuff really is not freaking me out. People have been doing that forever. But the act of standing in the dumpster is a dodgy one, and also much of this stuff — pillows, clothes, TVs, furniture — has got to be infested with bed bugs.

I am not hating on the freegans. I have a friend, a smart grad student, whose entire apartment was furnished with curb-found furniture. It was nice, too, seriously. And when I was a kid, my mom’s favorite bookcase came from the curb. (But both of those things happened before 1998.)

A year and a half ago, I would have been cheering too. Recycling, or free-cycling, if you will, is so green!

But lots of people in New York have bed bugs. Way more than you hear about. And I hear about a lot of them, every week. I’ve even heard of some in the vicinity of NYU. And why would that surprise you, since college dorms and residences around the country (and beyond) are becoming infested. Would it be possible that NYU had lots of bed bugs, since it is not only a college, but located in a very infested region? Quite possibly.

Dumpster diving, anywhere, is not such a hot idea. And if you find good stuff, I mean stuff that looks great–TVs! iPods! Really clean-looking mattresses! Be wary.

Sure, NYU students may have a lot of disposable income. But who throws away a working iPod?!? Who doesn’t have the space to carry an iPod? Think about it.

What’s greener than dumpster diving? Let me tell you: not getting bed bugs. Because getting bed bugs is the least “green” thing you can do. You’ll rue the plastic garbage bags and XL ziplocs and gallon ziplocs and pest control operators with sprays containing who-knows-what.

And the repeat visits from the PCO, and the extra laundry, and the extra laundry, and the extra laundry.

And if something should be too infested to treat: the destruction, the replacement, and so on.

Getting bed bugs is the one of the least green things you could do this year, and it’s probably one of the most expensive surprises you can have, save losing your job.

Insurance does not cover you.

So say it with me, anti-consumerists, “freegans,” thrifty free-cyclers, craigs-listers, salvation army thrift store shoppers, treehuggers, Al Gore-lovers:

Dumpster diving in bed bug city is not thrifty nor green. Things ain’t always what they seem.

I’d love to see people in hazmat gear carefully combing through the dumpster contents, isolating possible “good finds”. Inspecting them carefully, really carefully, taking them off somewhere, maybe even for treatment, and re-selling the stuff to people who care about the environment and have money to burn. It could even be done for charity–maybe to help others who need furniture and can’t afford it.

Whether your motivation is saving money, or saving the planet, or both, spreading bed bugs is going to sabotage your plans.

If you want to love the environment, as I do, and say no to capitalism, then do your best to educate yourself and others about bed bugs.
And avoid them like the plague that they are.

• Dumpster-diving tenant evicted after Winnipeg apartment seriously infested with bed bugs
• The bed bug times are a’ changin’, ever so slowly
• Today show recommends sharing used mattresses on Craigslist, Freecycle
• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper

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Hello everyone!

You know, besides reruns of Green Acres, and occasionally speaking of herself in the third person, there’s nothing Bed Bug Helloise enjoys more than sturdy, useful bed bug-fighting products.

So believe me when she tells you she has exciting news: XL Ziplocs are now being constructed with two zippers, not one (as previously). This means they’re less likely to come open, which used to be a problem. We had this happen several times last summer, as did several readers. Perhaps it was the construction, or perhaps the humidity played a role.

Bed Bug Helloise also just saw large Hefty XL and XXL Big Bags at Target, next to the XL and XXL ziplocs. At first glance, we are skeptical. The Ziploc brand bag’s zipper provides a definite airtight seal, especially now there are two zippers. The Hefty bags have a different style zipper that slides along to seal the bags. We have not obtained any, so if any readers have tried them, we’d be glad to hear whether they, too, are airtight and if the seal seems sturdy. Our own experience with smaller 2 gallon bags with the Hefty zipper was not good–we found those sliders broke easily. Let’s hope that’s not true with these larger bags.

Editor’s note: this is what you might call a slow news day.

And what’s with the woman on that ziploc box? If she read Bedbugger, she’d know the balls could all be washed thoroughly. Only the baseball mitt and the skates would have to be treated somehow with a cleaning product, frozen, heated, or (if you really like having stuff sit around for no reason) stored for 18 months. Why is she so gleefully carting that stuff off to storage. What? She doesn’t have bed bugs?!?

• Queries from Bed Bug Helloise: hanging clothes storage?
• Hints from (Bed Bug) Helloise: your bedbug-opinions on hanging Space Bags, Space Bag Totes
• FAQ: how do I deal with clothing during treatment for bed bugs (and for a while later)?
• FAQ: How do I prepare for pest control treatment? Should I put everything in bags?

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I personally used two vinyl covers from Target for $10 each, which each ripped in turn. Then I got a National Allergy one. I like this one because instead of the vinyl, it has a soft polyurethane membrane laminated to a fabric finish. You would never know it was there. (Try that with the vinyl ones!) And it seems a lot sturdier. The zipper has a little nook to fit into, and I think the point where the zipper closes is pretty safe, though we’re told zippers are a danger point in general, and so the whole zipper should be taped.

I’m happy to tell you that National Allergy has offered us a sweet deal: a discount for you on their products, and an affiliate deal for us (which helps to run the site). The discount is 7% if the products you order add up to under $174.99, and 10% if you spend over $175. The discount is good on whatever you buy from the site, but the link below goes specifically to mattress and pillow encasings which are labeled for bed bugs.

You must click the National Allergy banner below (or elsewhere on this site) to trigger the discount code. You can use this link below again to get the discount anytime in the future.

I feel its necessary to say that mattress covers need to be treated with care, and used properly, in order to keep bed bugs in. You need to put the encasing on with care, tape the zipper (some recommend clear tape; I haven’t tried the tape NA sells, but maybe others can report on that). Watch out if you have a cat with claws; they can puncture any kind of cover. You need to leave it on for 18 months, or even permanently. (You may want to replace it eventually, but definitely don’t remove it within 18 months, since we know bed bugs can live that long without feeding.) The instructions on National Allergy’s site say bleach can damage the waterproof nature of the cover, and without further knowledge of what other substances besides mild detergent might do, I don’t think you should spray it with anything, though you can and should vacuum it when you change the sheets or at least every few weeks. And don’t forget your pillows, which can harbor bed bugs.

• National Allergy mattress encasement test results
• New mattress encasement comparison test data
• Queries from Bed Bug Helloise: hanging clothes storage?
• FAQ: How do I protect my bed from bed bugs?

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Here’s a powerful tipping point: Bedbugs are mentioned in the newsest Brookstone Catalog! We have finally arrived.

Their featured “NEW” product is a mite-proof mattress cover and in big letters on the top of the print catalog page, the headline reads:

“Mites and Mold and Bedbugs, Oh My!”
“Protect Your Sleep with CleanRest”

If you read the small print in the online catalog (link below), you’ll see the word “bedbug,” too. NOTHING in the Brookstone catalog is accidental. The fact that this “new” product being carried, and what it is advertized as providing protection for, is a tipping point for sure.

They used the B-word, and it wasn’t Brookstone!

• Guest post: Can information spread faster than bed bugs?
• Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft’s alleged bed bugs, part two
• Bedbugs!!! wins theater contest
• Maybe a new treatment - maybe snake oil

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