Frankly there is not a mattress manufacturer who exists today that is capable of producing an āorganicā mattress. Not in the truest sense of the word.
Container ships are fumigated when they dock in a new country. This is to eradicate pests that infest all types of goods, warehouses and transportation methods.
Given that Canada and the USA do not have rubber trees, it is necessary to source āorganic latexā from other countries. This subjects the latex to this fumigation at port of entry.
EDIT - apologies, I should clarify a bit here. If the container in question has latex on plastic shipping skids, it may avoid being fumigated. Most skipping skids are still made of wood, though. This is a tough one to have certainty either direction.
In my humble opinion, this one issue alone should preclude the use of the word organic in any mattress which contains latex.
And even then, if you said hey, we have an organic mattress without latex, then my question would be: ādid you have to transport any of the materials and if so, how were they packaged?ā The answer is more than likely to be āyes, and plasticā
If someone wants to become an organic farmer and rancher, and they want to grow their own hemp or cotton, raise their own sheep, perhaps grow a bunch of dandelion (you can get latex from these fantastically annoying weeds!) and then take all of this and locally produce, then perhaps that would be a proper organic mattressābut that person had better ensure theyāre not using machinery of any kind, because the machinery either has various emissions or might have needed to be lubricated with oil.
Anyway, I went off on a bit of a rant for sure. Berkeley Ergonomics is a great company. Iāve been in this industry nearly 20 years and theyāre among the most loyal, honest, hard working folks in this business. I think a lot of competitors in particular are very critical of BE as theyāre very hard to compete with. I know even within our own supplier mix that there is certainly some animosity towards BE, and I believe this to be the case simply because they are so good at what they do, and at a very reasonable price.
Being 100% perfect is literally not possible, but Iād hazard to say BE comes pretty darn close.
Organic mattress makers in particular have a hard time with the BE pricing structure because frankly, most organic mattresses are being sold for considerably more money (often because organic certificates cost a fair bit of money). For our company, this is not an issue. We have mattresses which range into the tens of thousands of dollars. Iām merely trying to illustrate that Berkeley tries very hard to deliver excellent value for money and I believe that some of their competitors are remarkably challenged in this area.
Ultimately there is a lot of evolution still to come in the āorganic mattressā space. Organic is a bit of a fad, and as with any fad, itāll die off a fair bit in the next 5-10 years. The good news is that this will be replaced by the more sustainable approach of a āhealthy mattressā - organic materials where appropriate, but with more focus on quality and value rather than marketing.
We already see a lot of this happening. The number of consumers coming into our stores that view āorganicā as a negative term, is actually quite alarming. 5 years ago, this term carried far more weight. Retailers and manufacturers relying upon the āorganicā angle will be left behind, no doubt.
Iāll close this by saying I have nothing against the desires of wanting to live a clean, healthy, sustainable life. Organic practises are certainly capable of contributing to some of these ideals. My point is only that organic is not the āend-all, be-allā when it comes to achieving these goals, āorganicā is simply too narrow-minded.
