Making eco-smart buying choices can feel like navigating your way through an informational black hole. If you’re lucky enough to find someone to answer your questions honestly, you quickly discover that “eco-friendly” is a slippery, over-used term.

At Natura, we believe that to be truly sustainable, a product needs to excel or add value in three areas:

• Environment
• Human health
• Social conditions (including animal rights)

Chemicals and the environment

When a pesticide is used, not only are destructive pests killed, but a myriad of predators and prey, which can tip nature’s delicate balance. One problem is eliminated but 5 more may be created. Many agri-chemicals end up in groundwater reservoirs, which spread their reach to surrounding plant and human life.

Manufacturing chemicals are equally destructive. An organic blanket that’s dyed a trendy color may have started out with a smaller carbon footprint, but as the dyes are rinsed through the fabric, known carcinogens contaminate the land and put workers and the local community at risk.

Chemicals and your body

Nature recycles everything, retrieving chemicals and molecules from one form for use in another. When you sleep on a synthetic blanket or eat processed foods, chemicals that enter your system are immediately repurposed or stored for later use, creating a rippling of biological consequences later in life.

Your body doesn’t recognize (or understand) synthetic chemicals or the dangers they carry – it’s confused. Reducing your exposure to toxins ensures that the resources your body stores aren’t ticking time bombs.

Social (Ir)responsibility

The social impact of a product can be as devastating (or uplifting) as its environmental effect.

Natura buys wool from New Zealand farms because we’ve researched sheering practices of other countries and found them lacking. New Zealand has the benefit of being a large country with lots of room for year-round grazing, but farmers there also practice hand-sheering. Human contact with the animals, rather than mechanical or chemical, prevents needless injury and death.

We understand it can be frustrating to hunt for organic information only to run up against roadblock after roadblock. But when you push manufacturers and retailers to be accountable, the companies that are doing it right are rewarded (with your dollars) while the ones that aren’t, are forced to change for the better.

At Natura, we’re doing our best to practice transparency. Your questions help us grow and change – which means healthier manufacturing, healthier products and a healthier world.

What do you want to know about organic bedding? Drop us a comment below or contact our Customer Service Team.