In my previous blog about methods of disposing and recycling your mattress, I discussed several ways in which one can have their older mattress properly disposed of. I felt this was an important issue regarding the space they take up in a landfill and for overall sanctity of our planet.

Another important issue is the overall production of new products and looking for clean, green and sustainable ways to produce them. Green is in, and finding new ways to produce products, while reducing our carbon footprint, and maintaining our industrialized lifestyles is a unique, but obtainable challenge.

In the past few years, mattresses now have an option to include BioFlex Polyols, or soy bean based foam. Soy beans are a sustainable product and can be refined into a BioFlex Polyol to later be manufactured into a foam product. Several mattress manufacturers and retailers are boasting about their clean and green soy foam based futon mattresses.

According to a My Luxury Mattress Blog regarding this issue, most mattress manufacturers only feature between 5% to 50% soy foam. Most of this time, it is only 5% soy foam. I wouldn’t call that necessarily green.

There are a variety of reasons why only marginal amounts of soy foam are used in mattresses. One of them, is the odor. Soy foam protrudes a unique odor that no one deserves to experience, especially when attempting to receive a full night’s rest. The Green Guide explains that Hickory Springs only includes up to 20% soy foam due to odor.

Another reason why I’m not totally sold on soy-based foam inserts is the fact that there should be considerable savings compared to a petroleum based foam. Home Textiles Today features a blog regarding the use of soy-foam and explains that 3,800 barrels of oil are saved when 100,000 mattresses are manufactured with soy-based foam. Yet so many soy-foam mattress require you to open your wallet up further. If so many barrels of oil—now between $130 to $140 per barrel (as of July 2008)—are being saved, why aren’t the dollar savings being passed on to you?

I applaud the effort to reverse the use of petroleum-based foam in mattresses and the overall effort to reduce our carbon footprint. However, most manufacturers have not found the correct method in creating a 100% soy foam mattress, and to reduce the odor that soy provides. The savings that these manufacturers are experiencing are also not being passed to the consumer.

Soy foam along with green and sustainable methods are getting there, little-by-little. But we’re not there just yet.