What is natural latex?

Green Sleep's mattresses are made of 100% organic hevea natural rubber. 

The ideal mattress consists for more than 90% of hevea natural rubber and offers the same elastic properties in all directions, and thus is perfectly isotropous. In addition, this product breathes perfectly and is not temperature sensitive. As a result, it never feels moist or warm to the touch. Other products too use hevea natural rubber. I hereby think of condoms, airplane tires or Formula One tires,  weather station balloons… in a word, everything that has to be extremely elastic and stable.

To make these 100% hevea natural rubber mattress cores, we needed fresh and identical hevea milk and innovative technical know-how. Therefore, the mattress cores had to be produced in the land of origin of the hevea milk. But what exactly is hevea milk and where do you find the best to make a mattress core?

HEVEA BRASILIENSIS is the name of the rubber-tree. As the name already says, the tree was discovered in 1736 in the Amazon region by the French explorer Charles Marie de la Condamine (1701-1775) who brought the rubber to France as a curiosity.

All throughout the world, we find trees that, when injured or damaged by insects, secrete a liquid substance that by solidification prevents fungi or bacteria from penetrating into the tree.

As a pine-tree secretes resin or a maple-tree produces maple juice, the Hevea Brasiliensis or rubber-tree produces a milky juice, also called latex, that solidifies into a rubbery mass. An English pharmacist discovered that this mass could be used to rub out pencil. In fact, the product name “rubber” is borrowed from the English “to rub”.  This rubber especially has elastic and water-repellent properties.

In 1839, it was discovered that the rubber and sulfur under influence of heating-up, the so-called vulcanization process, result in a rubber that remains strong and solid in a temperature range from 0°C to 100° C. 

Since then the product has been used to waterproof textile, to manufacture car and bicycle tires, chewing gum, paint, condoms,... and mattresses.