Organic Certifications - We Set the Bar High

by jason schaefer June 16, 2017

The best part about shopping at Soaring Heart is that you don’t have to do a lot research or furrow your brow when picking out your mattress, pillow or set of sheets.  This is because our products carry the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and Global Organic Latex Standard (GOLS) certifications.  Essentially, we went out and found you “that friend” who does hundreds of hours of research to make sure they get the most organic zucchini on the market.  All you need to do is follow their lead! 

To maintain our GOTS and GOLS certification we are required to prove we can trace every component in our products back through all our manufacturing processes to the point they showed up on our loading dock as raw materials.  We do this by assigning lot and batch numbers to each component, from the latex core down to the tufting string.  However, what really gives the GOTS and GOLS certifications their teeth, is the fact that unlike Green Guard, Oeko-Tex and most other certifications out there, GOTS and GOLS requires a facility audit once a year to make sure everything we’re building is compliant.  We use the Control Union for our third-party auditor.  Oregon Tilth is another popular organization that conducts this audit. 

The auditor reviews our build logs (required by CPSC 1632 and 1633), our sales reports (required by the State) and our books (required by the Feds) to make sure we received enough certified raw materials to build the certified mattresses we’ve sold and keep in inventory.  They also verify our employees have chosen to work with us and are earning a living wage. 

Once the auditor gives us the thumbs up, he or she goes back to each of our suppliers to make sure they are still complaint.  For example, the Californians who process our wool into batts must prove everything is in order, then the Texans who washed the wool have to verify their process was compliant, then the Kiwis that sheared the sheep have to prove they were complaint, then the shepherds raising the sheep have to prove they were complaint as well! 

I realize that was a dense sentence.  An easier way to describe the process is to watch the Portlandia sketch “Is the chicken local”.  Thanks to the processes required to be GOTS and GOLS certified, we can actually get close to this level of detail!  Our owner has even personally traveled to the ranches and plantations growing our Cotton, Latex and Wool. 

At the end of the day, our goal is to help folks sleep better.  We believe the GOTS and GOLS certifications we maintain provide our customers with the peace of mind they need to snuggle up in their beds for decades to come. 

---

---

Leave a comment

Comments will be approved before showing up.

Name *

Email *

Comment *

---

Also in SH Blog