subject: Mattresses, Green or Garbage? [print this page] Mattresses, Green or Garbage? Mattresses, Green or Garbage?
Purchasers who buy large volumes of mattresses, as opposed to the rest of us, have to be concerned with getting product that will suit their mission and serve their customer. If you are purchasing mattresses for a prison, cost and security are your driving concerns. If you are purchasing for a dormitory, cost is still important; but comfort is very important. No matter who the end user is, disposing of old worn out mattresses is becoming more and more of an issue.
Densified fiber is good for the cost shopper, and is very commonly purchased by the institutional buyer. They are generally not very flammable, and do not have springs. Most prisons these days do not allow coil spring mattresses, as the prisoners pull them apart and turn the metal springs into weapons. The drawbacks are that they are not very comfortable, and tend to wear out quickly. Frequent replacement can mitigate the initial savings.
Polyurethane foam is probably the most popular right now for dormitory use. Foam mattresses are a good compromise between cost and comfort. Foam can be cut to any dimension and thickness, and can be used for both mattresses and seating applications. A major drawback is that polyurethane mattresses are very flammable and the requirements for "flame testing" are very stringent and constantly changing. Another negative is the cost of foam. Polyurethane is an oil based product, and in times of rising oil cost, the cost of foam changes just as fast.
A new product, that is exclusively from Made Rite Bedding, is a proprietary elastomeric polyester material called IndurCore. Goodrum International has been offering this product to our institutional customers because of the cost advantage and the recyclability after they reach their end of life. IndurCore mattresses have no springs, and compare with foam mattresses in both comfort and fire resistance. The pricing is often $25-30 less per mattress, and has been very well received.
Benefits of the IndurCore
Resistance to Bed Bugs
With the wave of Bed Bugs that swept across the country this year, many universities are very concerned with having mattresses that are resistant to bed bugs, lice, microbes and other pests. Bed bugs like to hide between the tape and the mattress, and lay their eggs there. This new polyester material along with switching from taped edge to inverted seam mattresses makes the new generation of mattresses very pest resistant.
Contains no hazardous foam or flame resistant chemicals
Per federal regulations enacted in 2007, all mattresses are now required to
pass the stringent Federal CPSC1633 Code. Foam mattresses are highly flammable, and they do not meet these standards. To meet this new standard, many manfacturers have added an FR, or fire resistant scrim at significant additional cost per mattress. The IndurCore mattress is made from a polyester fiber that is both environmentally safe, and has flame-resistant characteristics. This fiber meets meets the Federal CPSC1633 Code without need of a FR scrim and without flame-retardant chemicals.
100% recyclable "GREEN" product
However you feel about environmental concerns, more and more Universities are putting the requirement for recycling their old mattresses into their mattress bids. For the most part, this has meant paying laborers to carry the mattresses into a dumpster and hauling them off to a land fill. The IndurCore mattress is 100% recyclable, and the cost of recycling is just a bit more than the cost of disposal.
There is no one answer for every customer. Individuals are going to continue to go with coil spring mattresses. They are not cheap, and not environmentally friendly; but they are the most comfortable. Military barracks, prisons and dormitories purchase mattresses by the hundreds and thousands; and they purchase them, knowing that they are going to be used and abused and discarded. No one can accurately tell you how many cubic miles of land fill space are filled with decaying mattresses; but the wave of the future is going to be mattresses that can be recycled.
