Yahoo Answers recently had a person ask this question. Do you think this ‘organic’ thing is getting out of hand?
I understand being choosy when it comes to the food you eat, but I just saw organic mattresses. Seems like a money grab to me. As a retailer, we have done our best to avoid ” money grab” products. 5 years ago I would have agreed 100% that an
organic mattress was nothing more than a cash cow for the bedding industry. After much intense research and nearly 2 years of positive customer feedback, I believe that they may be the very best mattress choice available today.
Compare Organic Mattresses to Regular Mattresses. 1. Most typical mattresses wear out in eight years. Consumer Reports said that. In fact, if you research organic mattress made from all-natural latex foam rubber it typically offers great long-lasting shape and supports 15 to 20 years.
2. All-natural latex rubber comes from a quick growth tree. Standard Polyurethane Foam (PU) foam in mattresses is a derivative from oil. Can’t grow that or replace it.
3. Standard PU foam in standard mattresses quickly gets body impressions or body indentations because companies opt to fill them with low-grade foam. Organic latex rubber does what rubber does best, bounces back and keeps its shape like a ball, tire, or rubber band.
4. PU foam is synthetic chemical coagulation or plastic. Latex rubber is virtually no toxic chemicals and very simple in its composition.
5. Organic mattresses do not off-gas and good ones have a minimal smell. Conventional mattresses, memory foam mattresses, and even waterbeds have a strong chemical smell when they are first unpackaged and chemical smells can linger for quite a long time.
6. Nearly every mattress made today brand name and non-brand name uses chemicals to comply with federally mandated laws for fire safety and fire retardancy. Most organic mattresses comply naturally using organically raised wool to limit mattress burn rates and comply with the CPSC law TB1633FR in a healthy manner.
7. Chemicals used as fire retardants have not been tested in a long term or short term sleep applications. The result for us is sales pitches from manufacturers claiming only trace chemical amounts. So we really do not know what or if we are breathing nauseous chemicals and dealing with absorption of chemicals through the skin that we don’t understand much less what their effect might be.
8. Mattress manufacturers are not required to disclose what chemicals are contained in mattresses to make them FR compliant. Do you know what is in organically raised wool? If it is certified wool like most organic mattresses, No chemicals.
9. Naturally grown thread made from organic cotton makes not only high quality and very durable cover but again limits the human body to no harmful chemical exposure. On the other hand, the typical mattress and boxspring fabric cover are comprised of mostly synthetics with very minimal amounts of natural material.
10. One strips and rapes the Earths land while giving back absolutely nothing. The other is built from renewable, sustainable, replenishable, and healthy resources and is almost 100 recyclable.
My position is this, I am not sure where I stand on the whole carbon footprint thing, and quite frankly both sides of the issue scare me a bit. Example, recently I had a customer shopping organic beds that criticized our organic beds (optional) plastic zipper. This necessary evil allows a person the option to adjust the mattresses feel as they age and their firmness needs change. They could also replace single parts if they wore out or were defective. My customer did not connect the true organic nature of our bed. She basically started condemning my mattress by saying it wasn’t organic, yet she arrived at our store in her “hybrid” Toyota Prius not a bike and I pointed that fact out, fortunately, we came to an organic understanding ant the result was that she purchase the mattress.
In summation, the reality is that regular mattresses have been built for years by an industry that hasn’t cared or done much to speak of environmentally for years. Compare that to an emerging environmentally friendly, long-lasting, comfortably supportive, and a virtually no toxic chemicals alternative at comparable prices. To me, organic mattresses have become a no brainer and may very well become a mainstream mattress choice out of necessity.