Would you be willing to pay an extra $25 or so to make sure the mattress you just bought doesn't eventually clog up some landfill site?

 

Lawmakers in California are considering a measure that would add a recycling fee to each new mattress sold in the state. The idea "is to require the industry to reclaim the springs, wood and fiber from millions of old mattresses that plug landfills and clutter Southern California streets every year," according to the Los Angeles Times

 

So far, the industry isn't fond of the proposal, saying recycling should be an issue for manufacturers and not the government. But some signs indicate the idea of recycling mattresses is catching on as organizations look for ways to cut costs and solid waste.

 

It's never been easy for high school students to secure entry into an Ivy League school, but this year proved more challenging than most. 

 

Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia reported record-low admission rates for students who will enroll as freshmen in the 2013-14 academic year, Bloomberg News reports.

 

What's driving the low acceptance rates? It's partially just a numbers game, given that applications from would-be Ivy Leaguers climbed to all-time highs or held near their records. As a result, that's pushed down the percentage of applicants who are offered seats at the prestigious schools.

 

Applicants found out on Thursday whether they made the cut, The New York Times said.

 

In Italy, pizza isn't sold by the slice, but by weight. The thinking is that heavier slices eat up more of the pizza maker's ingredients and, therefore, the price should cover more of the cost.

That sounds just fine, until economists consider applying the same standard to overweight airline passengers.

Bharat Bhatta, an associate professor at Norway's Sogn og Fjordane University College, wrote last week in the Journal of Revenue Pricing and Management that airlines should consider charging by space and weight. According to Reuters, Bhatta suggests that such a move would not only help airlines recoup some of the fuel costs associated with carrying additional weight, but it would also offer passengers motivation to drop a few pounds and get a discount.

 

Another national company says it's reducing the number of hours many of its employees will work, making them part-time staff, thanks to Obamacare. Scheduled to go into effect next year, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is expected raise health care insurance prices, according to recent studies. As a result, a growing number of American businesses are opting to switch workers to part-time status.

AAA Parking, the latest company to react this way to Obamacare, manages more than 200 properties across the U.S. and employs over 1,500 people. AAA recently announced it will move about half of its 500 full-time, hourly employees to part-time status next month in response to the Affordable Care Act.

According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, a company memo said executives had "spent extensive time evaluating the impact of this mandate, and the financial impact for AAA Parking is dramatic."

 

The term "colony collapse disorder" might sound like something out of science fiction, but it's a growing problem with widespread economic consequences affecting one of the more beneficial insects to mankind: honeybees.

 

Whole colonies of honeybees have been dying off for years now, and no one seems exactly sure why. And if you think dead bees don't affect you, think again. As The New York Times notes, those bees are essential for pollinating much of America's fruit and vegetable crops.

 

"The Agriculture Department says a quarter of the American diet, from apples to cherries to watermelons to onions, depends on pollination by honeybees," says The Times. "Fewer bees means smaller harvests and higher food prices."

 

A Texas organization is raising money to buy guns for residents in high-crime areas and single women who may be vulnerable to attack.

The Armed Citizen Project, based in Houston, also has operations in Tucson, Ariz., near the site of a 2011 shooting that killed six and injured 13, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

According to its website, the group is also organizing efforts in Dallas, Indianapolis, Chicago and Detroit, and is seeking volunteers in other cities to help equip qualified citizens with 20-gauge shotguns. 

People who accept a gun must pass a background check and complete a safety training course. In addition, they must have lived at their current address for at least a year.

 

Amazon.com (AMZN) has acquired Goodreads, a social media site for book lovers, for either a shocking amount of money or a pretty good deal, depending on which news report you read.

Bloomberg Businessweek estimates that Amazon paid "close to, but not quite, $1 billion" for the site while Kara Swisher of the AllThingsD blog pegs the acquisition price at about $150 million, or up to $200 million when factoring in potential incentive payments.

Seeing such a huge difference in price of a potential deal is strange considering that news about mergers and acquisitions often is leaked with the precision of a Swiss watch. Media sites rarely differ much on the price.

The Businessweek article is speculative, basing the Goodreads price on the value of LinkedIn (LNKD), a publicly traded company with 202 million active accounts valued by investors at $95 per user. 

A three-minute video featuring clothes by Louis Vuitton (LVMUY) is coming under fire for showing supermodels walking the streets of Paris as prostitutes.

The video has no words and a classical music soundtrack, and shows dark and blurred images of models in lingerie waiting in dark alleyways. The women are also seen getting into cars at night and taking off their clothes in front of a car's headlights. Later, the video abruptly switches to scenes from a Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week.

Women's groups are saying the clip glamorizes prostitution. "It's a disturbing video because it combines two different worlds -- the refinement of haute couture and the violence of the sex trade," a spokeswoman for the French group Osez le Feminisme told Le Parisien.