Hi LJGMDAD,
If a consumer wants organic and believes that it is somehow “better” than non organic wool (which may or may not be the case depending on how they define “better”) then of course they would need to be satisfied that the manufacturer was describing their organic product accurately. In some cases they may wish to see a GOTS certified organic certificate for the wool although “in theory” this could also be listed even if the wool in a mattress was different from the wool that was described by the certificate. All of this comes down to a matter of the level of “trust and verify” that a consumer is comfortable with and different people may need different levels of “proof” based on their own criteria and on the integrity and reputation of the merchant they are dealing with. Once a certificate is listed then some consumers will ask (and similar questions have often been asked on the forum) “how can I know that a certificate on a website is for the actual wool in my mattress” and of course it really wouldn’t be possible to “prove” this for someone that at some point wasn’t willing to “believe” what they were being told.
My point about their use of “natural” in the description is that it’s not actually incorrect and that if anything SleepEZ could replace it with organic and this would benefit them since it would also be accurate. It doesn’t put a consumer at risk of buying a mattress that contains organic wool and then finding out that it doesn’t have a certification. If a consumer believed the “natural” description over the other organic descriptions and certified organic was a make or break issue for them then it could cost SleepEZ a sale (although I can’t imagine that that same consumer wouldn’t talk with them to ask which one it was when they see this type of discrepancy). SleepEZ also tends to downplay organic certifications to some degree because they are well aware that it doesn’t necessarily affect the quality of a material and they are experienced enough in the industry to know that many consumers “buy organic” for all the wrong reasons because they don’t fully understand what organic really means. Having said that it’s just a result of the change in their site and there are probably several corrections that they will need to make over time as they become aware of them.
This is very similar to what they are doing now. It’s also somewhat ironic (and it has come up on the forum previously) that in some cases manufacturers that try to be as transparent and honest as possible are often a bigger target for criticism than manufacturers that don’t provide any meaningful information at all.
In addition to arguing that a mattress that contains Talalay shouldn’t be labeled as organic … it could also be argued that a mattress that wasn’t certified as organic “as a mattress” also shouldn’t be labeled as organic even if every material in the mattress was certified organic (see post #3 here for more about the different levels of organic certifications). This is not what is happening in the industry though and at this point wouldn’t be a realistic argument and if a manufacturer decided to take things this far they would almost certainly lose sales to other manufacturers that are less transparent and in many cases less “organic” than they are.
IMO the “best” solution with the industry as it stands today is for consumers to educate themselves about what questions to ask so that they are confident that a mattress they are purchasing is “organic enough” for their criteria. The most meaningful changes will come from having a much larger percentage of consumers that are more educated about what all the different types of organic descriptions and certifications really mean rather than what they have come to believe or what they “think” they mean.
Phoenix