Wednesday, October 20, 2010

A Good Night's Sleep

My girlfriend and I recently played with the notion of buying a new mattress. Our current mattress is as old as can be, smells, and is just simply not the comfortable thing we want to lie down on every night.

We went shopping to the mattress and furniture stores in the area just to get an idea of what is available, what factors we need to consider, and what price range we'll be looking at. At the very first store, we found a mattress that was withing our price range, was the most comfortable I have ever felt, was "made" (aka assembled) withing 50km of our home, and claimed to be made with an organic cotton lining and a soybean-based rather than petrolium-based foam. We walked away feeling like this mattress was meant for us - How could we find any better? It was everything we could hope for. But, of course, I have to look up the numbers behind this green product before purchasing. Which is causing somewhat of a problem.


I have looked up the mattress model that we liked, and have found it nowhere online. It's not even present on the company website. If something was really so environmentally friendly, wouldn't it be heralded from the rooftops to garner interest and confidence in a company? To make matters worse, I have a slight reason to believe that these claims weren't as wonderful as we, as consumers, were being led to believe (when is that not the case?). At another store, the salesman asked what had interested us so far. When we spouted off enthusiastically what we had found, he cautioned us that matresses made with organic cotton are usually only around 5% cotton, so we shouldn't base our choice on the environmental claims. He, being a salesman, was trying to disinterest us in our choice, of course. But he also mentioned that he has sold that model in his store "for promotion purposes" and so can't just completely discount it (or the company itself which he was still trying to get us to buy a different model of.)


When we first started off to find a mattress, we both agreed that we simply did not have the means to buy an environmentally friendly mattress. I am also of the opinion that when buying one item which lasts for so many years and consumes nothing in that time-frame, such as a mattress, eco-friendlyness is of less importance. But now that the option of a more natural, less chemical version in our price-range has been experience, I am having a hard time letting go.

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