Cook some spaghetti, shove it into a thin rectangular container, and place it in the refrigerator overnight. Dump the pasta onto the countertop.
What you’ll be looking at resembles Labyrinth, a mattress material Enkev Natural Fibres created that’s been nominated for a 2021 Green Products Award.
The annual international competition for innovative, sustainable products and services was started to “create a collection of green solutions for consumers and buyers to make the products more visible and to help manufacturers market them,” according to the group’s LinkedIn page.
One of those products is the spaghetti-like mattress layer. Labyrinth blends fully recyclable, synthetic fibers to create a comfort layer designed to replace polyurethane foams and other mattress materials.
According to the company’s website, “Humidity and air flows freely through the open layers of Labyrinth.” They compare it to a breeze blowing on a hot summer day where “the horizontal air movement caused by natural body movement during the hours of sleep gives you the most comfortable micro-climate.”
Durability testing shows Labyrinth loses only five percent of its thickness after rolling a 140-kilogram weight over the material 60,000 cycles.
Beyond its usefulness and durability, I have a personal story about how Labyrinth saved my sleep. Karsten Siewert shipped me a box of Enkev products to review and it contained a hand sample of the squiggly material.
One night when it was raining, I couldn’t take the drip, drip, drip anymore.
There is a curved metal downspout-drain outside my bedroom window. When it rains, droplets hit the tin bottom of the pipe’s curve and echo so loudly it keeps me awake. I took apart the drain, trimmed a piece of Labyrinth to fit, and secured it inside the drain. The water droplets now silently disperse against the Labyrinth while still flowing right through it. The dripping drain doesn’t disrupt my sleep any longer. I can attest, this really is a great material for getting better sleep, in more ways than one.
Voting is underway now for the 2021 Green Products Awards. You can click here to vote for Labyrinth.
