Purity and Sustainability

In Kerala, tropical southern India, most rubber tree farms are very small—a typical holding is less than 20 acres. These are not rubber plantations with thousands of acres of land. Kerala-based Cocolatex, which supplies natural Dunlop latex for Savvy Rest organic mattresses, is a small company, privately owned and operated. I visited Cocolatex during the winter of 2011 and was fascinated by what I learned.

Savvy Rest was the first organic mattress company in the U.S. to post organic certifications and independent test results on its website.  We have always made clear that although the raw materials of the Savvy Rest mattress casing are certified organic, there has been no formal organic certification program for the latex itself.

That has changed!

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has written extensively about indoor air pollution. Visit www.epa.gov, and you’ll find a section dedicated solely to concerns about what we’re breathing indoors. Much of this material was produced in collaboration with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

According to the EPA, there are three ways to approach the problem:

When we say “organic” mattress, we mean that the Savvy Rest mattress is made from the purest, most healthful materials. And we don’t use the term casually—our materials are certified organic wool, certified organic cotton, and the purest natural latex (natural foam rubber) that exists. Industry-wide, however, there is no clear-cut definition yet as to what is an organic mattress and what is not. So, while the industry is evolving standards, currently it’s up to each manufacturer to determine their own.