How Do Eco Friendly Mattresses Help Us?
Environmental mattress issues?
Personally, I am not entirely convinced global warming is man made, however I do believe that it’s important to make a sincere effort to preserve the Earth and it’s atmosphere. For as many years as I can count the mattress industry which supports my lively hood has not respected or supported the planet I live on that sustains my life.
I find it interesting how everyone points fingers including myself, when we are all to blame. Some believe being Eco friendly makes a difference while others do not. In the retail mattress industry I have had this question asked of me many times and people often giggle at the mention of an Eco friendly or organic mattress.
If history teaches anything is that we can learn a lot from past civilizations that knew the repercussions of being wasteful and for that very reason made use anything and everything. Those lessons are just as important today and somehow we have forgotten that in our throwaway society. I’m not talking about “go green” t-shirts you can by at a department stores, but rather real changes that can affect our personal health and our environments health.
Doug’s 5 reasons an environmentally responsible mattress is important
- When my father started his water bed business I can remember coming home and my mom telling us that we smelled like a swimming pool store. Today I cringe at the thought of my exposure to the chemicals that was endured throughout those years of selling vinyl waterbed mattresses. I am pretty convinced that those chemicals from off gassing sometimes called VOC’s had not only permeated my clothing but my body.
- As of July 2007 most people haven’t a clue that the way mattresses are being built was changed so radically. Today we all need to be very cautious to possible exposure to harmful PBDE’s in order. A mandated law that was designed to save the few people that were injuring or killing them selves by smoking in bed yet know we all live with a possible bigger risk.
- The average mattress is 12 inches thick or more, half of which is foam that is chemically high in content and petroleum based. Foam the primary ingredient to build a makes us the average mattress buyer a part of the problem yet again by stripping the oil of earth of another luxury. Yet many of us haven’t a clue of how foam it is built or where it comes from.
- The industry doesn’t want a mattress to last forever and builds mattresses for the consumer that don’t last but a few years for profits which could be made in other ways. The average consumer throws a mattress away with no real understanding of the environmental impact. They are typically unaware that 1 mattress set takes up to 25 cubic feet of landfill space and that in fact can take hundreds of years to break down.
- Most of us are unaware that mattresses don’t compost well while even more is not aware that nation wide only a handful of mattress recycling programs exists. This is because it is a very labor-intensive process to tear apart a mattress just like it is to build one.
Today Mattresses can be built with:
- Replaceable parts
- Biodegradable and sustainable materials
- Recycled materials
- Without or with minimal chemicals
- Eco friendly but human friendly too
Just to let you know that eComfort mattress, or all so-called “green” mattress is still using the petroleoum based foam, which is 50% of the product material. What they replaced is the mixture foam above, which is about 45% of the top portion. This is what they claim “100%” eco-friendly, but the “100%” is actually only the 45% they replaced. All visco-elastic foam has to use petroleoum based foam (50%) and there is no way around that. What they do with the rest 50% is what they claim “eco-friendly” by replacing the polyol with plant based substance.
Comment by Bob — April 30, 2010 @ 6:36 am
Bob you bring up a very good point by mentioning eComfort which happens to be one of the lines of mattresses we carry. I think we could agree that Visco Foam is not nor will it ever be Certified Organic, Organic, or at the very least Natural. The important thing is this is not eComfort’s claim to be eco friendly.
The Specialty Sleep Association (SSA) is working to put in place industry standards which will help define for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers alike what terms like all natural and organic will be defined as. However I do think that companies like them should be encouraged and supported in the continuance on their path of easing their burden on the environment and is the primary reason we do business with them.
Around 1900 Wilbur and Orville Wright started with a glider and within a couple of years added an engine and today we go to outer space. You pointed out “only 45% is being replaced”. My point is that we are not talking about 5%, 10%, or even 20% but approximately 30 percent, which is a lower number than your 45% but really is significant in the overall scheme of things. The oils used for this percentage is very sustainable and the amount as you point out is significant if it is only 30 percent. Compare that to memory foam mattresses built just a few years ago and just like the Wright brother we are witnessing a great achievement, this one however in sustainability. The on going debate is how to define it. One can easily see and call these advancements in technology a shade of green or even eco friendlier.
Eco friendly is not just defined by the savings in oil which is only one production component in an eComfort mattress; there are quite a few other things as well. I will continue to use eComfort as an example. For instance they incorporate 1 inch of recycled foam inside the mattresses, combine bamboo into the process of making the cover, and are maybe and most importantly manufactured in a 0 emissions environment. If we cannot recognize such accomplishments as battles in the war of sustainability then the only thing we will have accomplished is a term I loathe called green washing and a sale at the expense of a trusting consumer. I think there can and will be a balance as the SSA defines these terms and industry moves forward. I also believe eComfort deserves to be recognized as a leader in the memory foam industry because of their commitment utilizing sustainable materials, and their personal achievement of lowering carbon emissions from not only manufacturing but all facets of transportation from delivery of raw materials to the delivery to the consumer. That’s what makes eComfort Eco Friendly.
Comment by Doug Belleville — May 2, 2010 @ 7:43 am