The Organic Mattress Mythstery
No I didn’t misspell the headline. Having spent over 4 decades in the sleep industry I have to say I’m appalled at not only the lack of transparency by retailers and manufacturers alike. Half-truths abound in this industry. Here’s a few of my pet peeves for mattress Mythsteries.
- “This mattress contains 100% natural latex”. The only thing that’s 100% in mattresses is BS. The highest possible percentage of latex you can get is approximately 92%in Talalay and 95% in Dunlop the rest balance are gelling agents. In fact many times when people are told “it contains 100% natural” the truer statement would be “40% of this latex contains 100% natural latex.
- Organic latex I’m afraid I have concerns about. The Global Organic Latex Standard (GOLS) is typically what the industry uses to claim “Organic”. The problem is that it’s pretty hard (almost impossible) to verify. There are also other bodies that offer “Organic Latex” certificates that I feel are at best sketchy. The rubber comes from trees and the best analogy I can give is this. A while back I was on Facebook and someone wanted “Organic” fire wood. Now of course there was a lot of silly comments about that, and I can’t help but think that this is much different. Also the harvested Latex sap is washed thoroughly before it’s used, there are very little contaminates in it.
- Organic covers whether it be Cotton, Aloe Vera, Bamboo etc. in fact have very little of those components. Typically about 20%. The biggest tell is that the writing on the cover that says how organic it is pretty much has to be done in Rayon. Also at least for our Latex Mattresses I want a stretch cover not solid Cotton which doesn’t stretch. I want the mattress doing the work not the cover.
- Last but not least any mattress you can’t flip doesn’t work. “In my never to be humbled opinion!”