We hope the following information obtained from natural products industry insiders will help you to shop for each brand better. 

One problem right away with the organic bedding industry is there is no oversight as with organic foods.  For example, the federal government (U.S. Department of Agriculture or USDA) does not regulate claims for organic bedding and mattresses.  Furthermore, the Federal Trade Commission has also put no emphasis in this area of marketing, despite its fast growth.

Yet, finding companies that take organic certification seriously is critically important to purchasing a completely pure and safe mattress—one truly without harmful chemicals or petroleum by-products (including undisclosed fungicides used before cotton is imported into the U.S).

“Take this analogy so you can understand why organic certification is important,” says an industry insider.  “Kraft Foods can't just buy organic grapes and put them in a jar. Their entire packing facility has to be third party USDA certified and thereby insured against contamination from non-organic lines. Kraft then tests their final products for FDA criteria of purity (or they can take the recent peanut butter manufacturer's approach and risk going out of business).  But with organic mattress manufacturing without a regulatory standard, what you get varies considerably—you really don’t know where your product was made or if the cotton was fumigated with chemicals if it was imported—and a lot of cotton is imported.”

What if, for example, your manufacturer of your organic mattress makes them in the same factory using petroleum-based fillers and materials?  How likely is it your product will be contaminated or compromised?  Is that really what you want?  You have to question yourself about your own degree of purity.  Most people would want to know that a facility is certified organic because the real philosophy of being green is systemic.  How does that facility handle its adhesives?  Its cleaners?  Its energy?  Recycling?  Is it fumigated?  Having a certified facility makes a big difference.

You as the consumer don’t know enough yet.  You need to keep reading this information to get the best.

Otherwise, you won’t know what questions to even ask.  That means the salesperson focuses you on what he or she wants you to see or hear but not on critical questions of quality and integrity.

“You fell into the trap, like any other consumer, of not having a precise idea of the questions you wanted answered, and being knowledgeable enough to understand that the person on the phone will focus you on whatever they wish to show themselves as the best this or that, and confuse the issues.  The way to really compare is to simply use a checklist, like the one we have provided (see our Shopping Checklist). 

For example, the Sleep Store in Colorado carries organic mattresses that contain certified organic cotton from Texas but because they carry many different brands it is difficult for shoppers to know which companies actually do the manufacturing. 

A company may have 100 percent organic manufacturing such as Green Sleep but is their actual factory certified by a trusted third party or must you simply take the word of the manufacturer? 

A company might say that their cotton is ‘hand-picked’ and that seeds have oil in them that will go rancid in machine-picked cotton. All absurd.  In fact, the cotton could be the cheapest quality and scraped off the screens of combers, which is described in the fabric business as LINTERS or very short staple waste (NOIRS). 

If the organic cotton for your mattress was imported from Peru (as in the case of some companies) how are the organic materials sanitized to ensure against mold, yeast, bacteria?  Many organic products in large shops are inadvertently fumigated as part of standard operating procedures.  Other companies use a combination of natural rubber and petroleum-based compounds, yet claim to be natural.

Has your mattress company tested test their finished products for volatile organic compounds or VOCs, which include neurotoxins?  

Even the thread a company uses ought to be certified organic!!

In other words, this is a difficult shopping decision—but one that we hope to make simple for you by providing you with a shopping checklist.