Organic Cotton and Wool Mattress

How did you interpret the title of this post? I presumed (correctly) that you were thinking that the mattress that I am going to tell you in this article is containing natural materials; organic cotton and organic wool. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. This is exactly how some mattress companies play with the words and the structure of their sales pitches. In marketing world, words are wisdom and they can be manipulated; twisted and turned to hypnotize you into thinking what you are thinking. To some extent, some geniuses may be able to perform “make-believe” miracles such as turning a gas stove into a refrigerator. That is how marketing works. That is how you would believe that an organic cotton and wool mattress is a 100% orgnaic mattress.

Read again the title and tell me what you think. Got it? If you still can’t get the “actual” picture here, it is all right. I won’t blame you. These days we are so used to see thousands of ads everyday; newspapers, TVs, magazines, stores, hypermarkets, Walmart, and almost everywhere. It is easy to be misled by these types of ads and sometimes we just laughed at how idiot we were when we first read the lines. We didn’t read in between the lines. Our brain is a complex organ yet a stupid one unless we train it to be able to interpret one simple phrase into several meanings.

Whenever you go to a mattress stor and the sales rep told you that their mattresses are made from “organic cotton and wool”, you should be very wary about it. Ask him again; is the mattress made from “organic cotton” and “organic wool”? If he startled a bit (the trick didn’t work), then most probably the mattress he showed is not a 100% natural organic mattress. You have just been tricked into believing that the mattress is totally a organic mattress. This trick is commonly used since it works almost all the time. Why does it work? Because the moment someone said “organic”, your brain picked up that word and interpreted the whole phrase as one; therefor you would believe that the mattress is made from both organic cotton and organic wool.

So how to recognize or identify which mattress is a total 100% natural organic mattress? In my last post, I mentioned about NAOMI, an association that put up some standards to certify a mattress as organic. However, as far as I am concerned, the mattres association has not yet received any recognition from the whole industry that produce natural organic mattress. In other words, the standards produced were more like a self-proclaimed statement by certain companies to create hypes that their mattresses are the only certified organic mattresses. Well, I don’t want to go details about that so I leave that to the experts to decide. However, the standards produced by the so-called association can still be used to get the basic idea to decide whether the mattress is “natural” enough for you or for your kisd. You can visit my post here at Natural Organic Mattress.

Some of the standards listed described what type of wools can be called organic wool. Organic wool should be free from any chemical substances. Chemical-free means the wool should be obtained in an environment that is free from any chemical usage such as the foods given to the sheep (there have to be organic food), the process taken to garnet and card the wool, and so on. If any of these standards are not followed, then the wools produced are no longer 100% organic. But hell, we have been already living in a world full of chemicals (cars’ smokes for instance), why can’t we live with a 90% to 95% organic wool? We may not get the purest but as long as we know that the materials are made from controlled environment, that should be fine. To me, at least.

Wool is used in mattress production due to the fact that it is a plushy material. Plushy means comfort and comfort means you will get a good night sleep. A good nite sleep then means you will wake up from your bed feeling good and fresh like a princess. Or a prince, if you are a guy lol. That is why wool has been used in producing mattresses for years and since now we know the importance of using organic materials for better helath, organic mattress manufacturers have taken efforts to ensure all the materials used are at least 90% to 95% organic.

We all know for fact that kids are exposed to all sorts of threats every day. We do our best to avoid and to prevent bad things from happening to them. Asthma is one of those threats. Can we avoid our kids from getting asthma? Yes, we can but there are no guarantees to that. What we can do though is we have to do our best to avoid using allergenic items around our house. Stop feeding our kids with allergenic foods. Start using organic mattress for our kids.

Another good thing about using wools in producing organic mattress is its ability to insulate where then your body can naturally regulate your body temperature during the nights. You won’t feel hot or cold spots when sleeping and therefore you are less than likely to turn and toss on your bed. In short, you will be sleeping more comfortably on organic mattress than the regular comfort mattress.

How do we avoid our mattress from breeding dust mites? It will cost you a lot to buy repellants to repel dust mites. By the way repellants got chemicals in them and therefore they just defeat our intention to not using inorganic materials in our house. This is where organic mattress gains more popularity than standard mattress. Why? It is because of the wool. From what I have learned, each strand of woll has a coating of lanolin (wool wax or fat) that help to repel dust mites. This is due to the fact that each wool’s strand create a dreary environment that make it impossible for dust mites to settle in. As you know, mites only live in a damp environment. So they just can’t stand the dryness.

I believe so far we have covered few things that you should know before making an informed decision to get yourself a natural organic mattress. There are still few things we need to cover and we will do that in our next discussion.

Natural Organic Mattress

What actually defines an organic mattress? Does it have to be made from totally 100% organic materials to be qualified as an organic mattress? Well, when the term organic mattress was first coined, no one actually able to define the mattress whether it is an organic product or not. We can’t simply define the product by following each of its words’ definitions. It is hard actually to fully understand the concept behind organic mattress. Since people these days are aware of the importance of living in a healthy environment including sleeping on an organic mattress, an association was established to help in defining what is considered as organic mattress and later when the association has been recognized by the country, any organic mattress produced have to follow the guidelines provided by them to be qualified as organic mattress.

The association is commonly known as NAOMI. “NAOMI” is actually an acronym for National Association of Organic Mattress Industry. All mattress manufacturers that are the members of Naomi organization should comply with Naomi’s standard to produce organic mattresses. So far there are eleven guidelines laid down by the National Association of Organic Mattress Industry (NAOMI) for a mattress to be certified by the organization as organic. If any of these guidelines is not followed, then the mattress is considered as “normal mattress” and cannot be called organic mattress. This is where the term "Naomi organic mattress" being coined to differentiate the differences between certified organic mattress and none certified organic matterss.

Guidelines to Qualify an Organic Mattress as an Organic Product

The first thing that a mattress manufacturer should ensure is the mattress has to be free from any synthetic fabrics or fibers. To understand what synthetic fabrics are we should first understand what synthetic fibers are. Synthetic fibers are normally produced from synthetic materials such as petrochemicals. There are also synthetic fibers that are manufactured from natural cellulose such as rayon, nylon, polyester, and zylon. Therefore we can define synthetic fabrics as fabrics that are made from synthetic fibers. To process the synthetic fibers to be available as fabrics, more chemicals are added and therefore the end products contain more chemicals. In other words, any organic mattress to be certified as “organic mattress” should be free from these types of fabrics and fibers.

The second guideline is related to the first guideline where if fabric is used to manufacture the mattress, the fabric used cannot be treated with any sort of toxic chemicals. Chemicals such as “phlates” which I have many times explained in previous posts are chemicals that are toxic and dangerous to health and therefore cannot be used in producing organic mattress. Some companies may claim that the chemicals that they used in organic mattress production are “good” chemicals and not that toxic since they were classified by scientists as low-level chemicals. If you heard such claims, you should avoid from buying that so-called “organic mattress” as the National Association of Organic Mattress Industry has clearly said that none of toxic chemicals should be used in treating the fabrics used to produce organic mattress.

If the organic mattresses produces are using wools, then the organization has outlined another rule to qualify a mattress as organic where the wools should always be from sheep that are have been raised organically. The sheep are not supposed to be fed with chemical-made foods they are breed in chemical-free environments. Later we will go into discussions to check why wools are used in producing organic mattresses.

There are also other rules laid out to qualify the wools to be used in producing organic mattress. Just like the fabrics, the wool used should not be treated with any sort of chemical substances. Therefore the production of the wools has to be from factories that are not producing other chemical-based products such as polyester. Furthermore, the wools used to produce chemical-free organic mattress have to be tested first to ensure that they are free from arsenic and lead. In short, no chemicals should be used in any circumstances. I can see now that this could be the reason why some mattress companies are not producing organic mattresses since the standards and the rules to be complied to are really tough to be precisely followed and practiced.

Other rules that I have left out are more detailed descriptions on what an organic mattress should be made from. I can safely say here that to ensure that an organic mattress is really is an organic product, everything about it should be following organic standards. Starting from the selection of the materials to be used to processing each of the materials and then processing and combining all of the materials, none of them should involve the usage of chemicals. If there is, then the mattress is no longer qualified as organic. It should be sold and quoted as normal mattress.

However, there are exceptions to these rules. Materials such as the thread and the metal springs used in supporting the mattress to be firm and solid have no specific guidelines anywhere in this world to qualify them as being organic or not. Therefore these materials can freely be used in producing organic mattresses. Unless one day someone managed to create organic springs, then maybe for a mattress to be qualified as organic, the mattress should only used organic springs. That may sound funny today but hey who knows, hundreds of years ago no one would believe you that you can speak to someone thousands of kilometers away from you!

As I see it, an organic mattress is supposed to be made from only natural materials. This is my understanding and although it is hard to find one mattress that fit my criteria, I have to be patient to finally find one so that I don't have to feel guilty for not providing my family the best products to protect their health and their life. I don't mind spending thousands to achieve that goal as long as they got the best from me and that's my aim; to provide the best for them.

These days, you are more than likely to stumble into stores that are selling comfort organic cotton mattresses. Either you are in Portland or somewhere else, the possibility is there to find a mattress store. As I have extensively outlined to you what should qualify as organic mattress, you should now be able to identify a mattress to be organic or not. At least, you have some basic ideas on what questions you should ask the mattress sales rep. Isn’t it fun to see the sales rep who looks like Katrina Halili runs to her sales supervisor to get confirmation that the mattress you asked does not contain any phlates? It will be funnier if you know that she was actually asking about the meaning of phlates lol.

That’s all for now and if you are interested to find more information about Organic Mattress in Michigan, you may read that post. I will elaborate more about all organic mattresses either by updating previous posts or through new posts. If you have any inquiries, please do not hesitate to leave your comments. However, I recommend you to read more about mattresses and organic mattresses either from reading “mattress blog” or join any forums that talk about choosing the right mattress for your bed.

Note : From what I have learned from my friends, it seems like the so-called NAOMI association does not have any other members apart from the site who produced the standards to certify a mattress as organic. As far as I am concerned, no one has yet to take the initiative to unify all of the organic mattress manufacturers into one organization.