As they say - buyer beware. This past week I had the chance to visit our local mattress recycling plant and see where crews disassemble and process 100's of used mattresses each week. You'd think by now nothing would surprise me about mainstream, non-organic mattress manufacturing. But check out the photo below : yes, you got it! This high-end, individually pocketed coil mattress is encased in styrofoam!
Now there's nothing illegal about this. But really, would you buy a mattress if you read the label and understood that this is what you were going to be sleeping on?
The good folks at Springback Recycling have put together a very nice display of all the components they find in mattresses. Last year they recycled about 1 million pounds of steel (from springs), 750,000 lbs of mattress foams (typically recycled into carpet pad and insulation) and 55,000 lbs of yes, you got it - plastics.
At Soaring Heart we're committed to complete transparency about what's in our products and the costs to us as a community for the entire product lifecycle. We never use plastics of any sort, and we pride ourselves on "going the extra mile" to provide you the best all organic sleep products that we can find. It may sound simple - but thank you for helping us get the word out - it pays to read the label.
We’ve all had it. That rare occasion when you don’t have to rush to work, the kids make their own breakfast, no one has an early soccer match, someone else feeds the dog, the planets align and somehow you manage to get an extra hour of sleep. You open your eyes, a little confused at first but well-rested and refreshed…for about 4 minutes. Then comes the guilt. You “slept in.” It’s practically a dirty word for most of us. What about work, the children, the errands? You’ve let everyone down by selfishly lazing around in bed all morning. Or at least that’s what you’re telling yourself as you rush out of the bedroom to see what havoc your indulgence has created.
Take a minute and think about this. Feeling guilty for doing something your body is telling you it needs. We eat until we’re full. We drink when thirsty. Why the stigma around sleeping when our bodies tell us to? The goal with the first installment in our series of posts on sleep wellness is to talk you out of this thinking. Sleep is not a luxury item from a catalog. It’s not a splurge. You are not overindulging.
"We really need to look at sleep as something that's just as important to good health as diet and exercise," according to Ronald Kramer, MD, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a specialist at the Colorado Sleep Disorders Center in Englewood, Colorado. And he should know.
“I don’t need that much sleep.”
That may not be true. Everyone’s different. There’s no magic number. But a recent Gallup poll suggests that at least 40% of Americans are getting less sleep than they need. The general recommendation for an adult is 7-9 hours a night.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Well, OK…but we’re not in a rush to get there. Are you? We all know the obvious side effects of a bad night’s sleep. Irritability, constant yawning, inability to focus. What about the deeper impact of sleep deprivation? According to Thomas Roth, PhD, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, "we have good data linking insufficient sleep with all sorts of problems. It's connected to poor performance at work, obesity, diabetes, excessive risk-taking behavior, and heart disease." In fact, drowsy driving is responsible for at least 100,000 car crashes every year.
“You can’t make up for lost sleep.”
There’s a lot of debate about this. Well we’re optimists here at Soaring Heart. And there is research that strongly suggests you can catch up on sleep in the short term and reverse some of the ill effects of insufficient rest. We’re talking about daytime exhaustion, levels of inflammation in the body and Cortisol levels (which effect energy and stress management). Not to mention you’ll probably be in a better mood overall when you get a little extra shut eye. “Short term” is the key here. This doesn’t mean sleep 3 hours a night all week and then spend all day Saturday playing catch up. Some of that damage just can’t be undone. So playing the sleep catch up game should be your last resort.
“I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to.”
That just makes us sad. Everyone deserves to sleep well. If you have specific issues like allergies, heartburn or back pain that effect your ability to sleep well, stop in and talk with one of our sleep experts. They can explain how simple changes in mattress type, elevation and materials can help alleviate many common health issues. Maybe it’s a matter of environment or lack of comfort. Again, come talk to us. This is our world and we know our stuff.
We could go on and on about the importance of sleep; not just because we sell things for you to sleep on and under, but because we truly believe it. Adequate sleep is just as important as food and water. Sleep better, feel better. It’s that simple. Stop feeling guilty! Create a comfortable, natural, restorative environment and settle in for the night. And remember we’re here to help when you’re ready!
There’s a lot going on at Soaring Heart Natural Beds. We’re winning awards, improving a showroom and helping shape the landscape of green business. And we want to share the news with you.
First, a humble brag; Soaring Heart has been invited to be a featured speaker at the GoGreen Seattle conference in March. We are honored to sit alongside organizations who, like Soaring Heart, have made conscientious, sustainable, environmentally-friendly business practices the cornerstone of their work.
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oGreen empowers businesses with strategies, tools and connections to green their organizations with profitability in mind. Soaring Heart President/CEO Mike Schaefer, will be participating in the “Urban Manufacturers Fueling the Innovation Economy” panel on March 30th. If there are any business owners or decision makers in our Soaring Heart family that are interested in learning more about green business practices, we encourage you to attend the event. And be sure to stop by and say hi to Mike.
Be on the lookout for a new monthly feature on sleep wellness! Our products give you physical tools. We also want to help you develop the mental, emotional and environmental tools to reap the full benefits of proper, healthful sleep. We’ll share research, recommendations and simple tips you can incorporate into your daily routine. We hope you’ll share your own thoughts and experiences on our blog and Facebook pages, as well as sharing our tips with friends and family. Imagine the positive impact we could have on our community if we all simply slept better.
We are in the midst of redesigning our Fremont showroom and hope to have the space finished soon. If you need a little incentive to stop by and take a look, we are also bringing in new furniture lines, beautifully crafted from sustainably harvested hardwoods. And we are offering some great savings for February. 10% off adjustable foundations & organic Shikibutons!
Lastly, we are extremely proud to have won the City Beat News Spectrum Award for excellence in customer care. We know that we’re nothing without our loyal customers. We sincerely thank you for the positive comments, posts and reviews that helped Soaring Heart win this acknowledgement.
Photo: Seattle Seahawk Steven Hauschka with Soaring Heart Natural Beds Owner, Mike Schaefer
We’ve all seen Steven Hauschka warming up on the sidelines, planking, even doing the worm as a core exercise! But what you’ve haven’t seen is Hauschka’s ultimate pre-game preparation: a great night of sleep on a Soaring Heart Natural Bed!
That’s right, Steven Hauschka sleeps on a Soaring Heart organic mattress. He’s such a fan, he visited the Bellevue showroom on Saturday, greeting other customers and even enjoying some pre-game R&R and a guitar serenade.
We can’t take all the credit, but we do like to think we contributed to his perfect game against the Cleveland Browns the following day. Hauschka was 3/3 on field goals and 3/3 on extra points, scoring 12 points in the 30-13 Seahawks victory. That's what a healthy, restorative sleep can do.
Go Hawks! Go Hauschka! Go Soaring Heart!
At Soaring Heart Natural Beds, our mission is to provide safe, natural, comfortable bedding. Much of that begins with cotton selection.
How do we know Soaring Heart cotton is top grade? Because all of it is independently tested and graded by the USDA at one of their ten inspection plants located throughout the United States.
Samples are taken from each bale as it leaves the cotton gin and packaged for shipment to a plant like this one outside of Lubbock, TX.
The samples are then sorted on a conveyor belt and sent to teams of inspectors who test it for moisture content, fiber length and quality. With millions of cotton bales processed every year, these inspection plants are very busy places.
Independent grading like this is critical not only for quality standardization, but for pricing and shipping safety. Bales of cotton packed incorrectly have been known to quietly smolder and burn—an unlikely occurrence these days, but something every shipper wants to prevent. Clean, healthy cotton is something Soaring Heart can guarantee as every bale is packed, independently tested and labeled as it leaves the plant and ships to our door.
We are thankful for the hard work and conscientiousness of all the employees at every plant we do business with. We couldn't provide natural bedding without them!
Our thanks to a great group of United Way volunteers who joined us to build 80 pillows for donation to our local Eastside homeless shelters! We know the importance of great sleep for everyone in our community and nothing says "sleep well" like a pillow built with lots of love and care.
It was great to partner with the United Way and the folks from Congregations for the Homeless to distribute these pillows for the holidays. We feel very fortunate to be able to give back to our community and want to thank you - and every one of our customers - for making it possible for us to share the gift of great sleep. Happy Holidays all!
OK, OK, who remembers their grade school history class and how Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794, triggering a global boom for American cotton products?
Today a cotton gin is a building-sized machine able to clean and process truckloads of cotton in just minutes. The gins “fluff” and comb raw cotton to remove seeds, leaf parts and other field materials. Processing also carefully monitors and adjusts moisture content so that the cotton fibers can be uniformly graded by their length and weight.
The cotton bales Soaring Heart receives for yarn or cotton batting are individually sorted, packaged and labeled—moving directly from the field through the gin and into the shipping containers in about oh, 20 minutes.
Soaring Heart’s organic cotton is processed through the gin exactly the same as all other cotton—but is run at the end of each season (after a hard frost) and on days immediately after the machines have been cleaned and repaired. As buyers, we are getting not only the best cotton from the fields, but the best times for running our cotton through the processing machinery. Because cotton is processed without washing, it’s important for our raw materials to be as pure as possible and for machinery to comb out extraneous materials efficiently. And at Soaring Heart, that’s how we make sure no one gets a lumpy, leafy bed!
At Soaring Heart Natural Beds, we take pride in our natural, organic products. How do we know the best organic cotton is going into our products? We visit our growers and processors to see for ourselves.
With many thanks to our friends at the Texas Organic Cotton Coop, we recently toured cotton fields, visited a huge cotton gin to watch cotton processed as it comes in from the field, and toured the USDA grading plant where samples from each bale are independently verified. We also spent plenty of time with experts learning about crop rotation, disease prevention and other practices designed to improve cotton harvests without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, defoliants and other chemical products.
At Soaring Heart, we found quite a lot interesting:
The bottom line is, you can rest assured every bale of Soaring Heart cotton is carefully processed and tracked all the way from the grower’s field to our certified organic manufacturing facility. Stay tuned for future blog posts and more information and photos from our organic cotton pickin’ excursion!
With the holidays quickly approaching you’ve probably started thinking about family visitors and, more importantly, sleeping arrangements. Typically you sleep on the unforgiving couch in the basement while your beloved guests enjoy the luxury of your handpicked mattress. We know the holidays are a time for giving, but enough is enough, this year can be different.
This holiday season we’re offering a variety of ways to save on guest bedding for everyone’s needs. When you purchase a child’s bedroll, you receive a free pillow. Buy a futon mattress, receive a decorative cover, or purchase from the Tamarack guest bed collection and receive two free pillows.
Our Bedrolls are moisture-resistant and built for longevity. They’re versatile and easy to transport, whether used for travel, camping or moving from one room to the next. Our futons are moisture, mildew and dust mite resistant and also have thermal regulating properties. Both of these products are handcrafted from organic materials including cotton, Dunlop latex, and wool.
The Tamarack collection marries the organic latex mattress with our organic wool mattress topper to provide just the right amount of support and comfort for the best sleep possible.
As you’re preparing your holiday plans and dreading the lack of sleep you’re about to experience, keep us in mind. We’re happy to help with sleep options for you and your guests!
This October we’re featuring Organic Cotton Sheets. Many consumers are already making the transition to organic in the kitchen, but what about going organic in the bedroom?
The first question that may come to mind is what does it mean to have organic cotton sheets? Organic cotton is grown from non-genetically modified plants, meaning plants that aren’t grown with any synthetic agricultural chemicals such as fertilizers or pesticides.
This is crucial for a number of reasons, including the elimination of pollution to the air and surface waters and, in this particular case, reducing the chance of irritation to your skin. According to Zaroff, the founder of Under the Canopy and board member for the Organic Trade Association, “Sheets made of nonorganic fibers have been saturated in up to two pounds of chemicals like pesticides, formaldehyde and chlorine bleaches, which can be a major skin irritant.”
Your skin is the largest organ in your body and the key organ for absorbing everything around you. It seems like a no-brainer that switching to organic is the right choice. Along with the health benefits that justify the somewhat larger investment, the organic material also translates to longer product life. Without the harsh chemicals eating away at the fabric, you’re likely to have higher quality, softer and longer-lasting sheets.
As consumers, we are health conscious about what we’re putting into our bodies, but what about what we’re putting on our body? What is absorbed on the outside also makes an enormous difference in our overall health, not to mention the environmental benefits. So why stop at eating organic when you can sleep organic too?
Most of us in the Western part of the world have only ever slept on a traditional mattress. The often used box-spring and mattress set we almost all grew up with has alternatives. In the Eastern part of world they take a much different approach to sleeping, thinking of it on a more spiritual level, and even a healing and alignment of the body.
The thing about our mattresses is that many of them are simply too soft, not supporting our bodies properly while we sleep. The Eastern part of the world developed their own, simpler style of beds that have the ability to actually re-shape your back. They use a low to the ground platform and place a thinner, denser mattress on top. This mattress is quite firm compared to most any mattress you would find in a furniture store in the United States.
Our thanks to the team from the United Way of King County who helped us distribute 80 of our hand-crafted, all organic bed pillows to clients of Compass Housing in downtown Seattle. Not only did we have alot of fun with the pillows we also had time to wash a few walls and hopefully help some of Seattle's homeless population sleep abit better!
We also want to thank the Boys & Girls Club of Bellevue - as students from their Teen Center helped us very efficiently build these 80 pillows. As you might imagine, the combination of their youthful enthusiasm, the United Way's organizational skills, and the community services provided by the staff at Compass makes for a rewarding, and high impact community gift. For more information on United Way partner, Compass Housing, see (http://www.compasshousingalliance.org/who-we-are-top/who-we-are/). Meanwhile - we want to thank all of our customers for supporting our work - and giving us the opportunity to share the gift of healthy, restorative sleep with as many as we can. Thank you!
