When I lived in NYC, the garbage pickers came around ALL the time. They took EVERYTHING, all sorts of crap. Trust me- a non pissy mattress is like a goldmine to them! My friend's son used to get really bad nosebleeds, when he was little, so when she bought him a new mattress, his old one had lots of blood stains on it- and the garbage pickers STILL took it! I mean, they had no way of knowing that all that blood was from a toddler's nosebleeds, for all they knew, it could have come from an AIDS infected crack whore's drug den- but they still took it!