I’ve always been the one family calls before they put furniture on the curb. When it came to sofas – the first was a leftover from my father’s rec room. And my last sofa had been my Grandmother’s. Now don’t go picturing some woeful country floral pattern, standard faire. No, my grandmother as it turns out was quite ahead of her time.

But alas, circumstances demanded a new couch with no family member donation in sight. So I suppose there comes a time in every girl’s life when she gets to buy her first non-hand-me-down sofa?

So there I was, walking through the Mission District of San Francisco, some years after spotting Gram’s fabric choice on a couch in the trendiest San Francisco hotel lobby, (I said she was ahead of her time.) I fell in love. I pressed my face up against the glass for a better look, the only light coming from the street lamp outside. It was beautiful – exactly what I hadn’t known I wanted. It was Aspen snowboarding house, it was country it was city – it was a steel gray two-seater with a mini chaise lounge on the end and it had buttons with gatherings on all of the cushions. Swoon!

Suddenly a dark shadow was making its way to the door from inside the store. Without hesitation once outside she said, “We’ll be open at noon tomorrow.” But I was there on business, despite tomorrow being a Sunday – there were no guarantees.

Needless to say I tracked down the information for the manufacturer and model, and then remembered everything I’d been reading about flame retardants in couches. “Do you have non-toxic options?,” I asked the vendor. Suddenly my dream couch became a deep dive into the world of sofa cushions, manufacturing and resource politics. They didn’t offer options but were willing to work with whatever research I could bring them.

There was natural latex – an exorbitant, cost-prohibitive option. My mattress is made from organic cotton wrapped in wool (wool is a natural flame retardant.) So, I contacted the mattress company to see if they could make the cushion inserts, they could – at a major cost and a compromise on design and comfort. Then I heard about soy latex. I called the leading manufacturer to find that soy based latex only provides a 15-20% reduction in off-gassing. (A red flag regarding companies that had promoted their products as “green”, advertising soy latex as their substitute.) But the manufacturer understood my plight and directed me to a producer of cushion material made from recycled PET (i.e. water bottles).

In the end, the couch manufacturer put me on the phone with a veteran in their production department who was familiar with the PET product. She had sold it for six months and having only negative experiences with it in respect to quality, refused to work with it. Though she did assure me that the couch manufacturer is one of the most cutting-edge on environmental options otherwise – sustainable wood, low VOC stains, the usual that only applies to fifteen percent of the overall couch components.

I mean, let’s face it, the biggest problem is the flame retardants in the cushions – they comprise the bulk of the couch. Do you know how they became so ubiquitous? We can thank the high smoking rate in the 70’s. Government sought to protect us from people who might fall asleep with a lit cigarette on the couch or in their bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking we need to come-up with a system that allows at minimum for doctors to write prescriptions that vouch for non-smokers and allows them to purchase a standard non-flame retardant option. What I learned is not only is it something the public wants, but it’s expensive for manufacturers to include these chemicals in their products. Feeling as though I’d tried my best and after six weeks of pursuit, had exhausted a solid number of options, I gave-in and ordered the sofa love of my life. He’s on his way and will be on my doorstep, flame retardants and all in a couple of weeks.

I don’t necessarily think I can close the book on this one. I keep hearing about other companies who are using the PET option in mass-produced products, so it must work to some degree? But my thinking is that the market for non-flame retardant cushion solutions is in its early stages. We as consumers need to keep asking for other options and we also have state and federal regulation standing in our way. When better options become available – I can re-stuff my sofa cushions! I’ll have my eye out, though you just might see my handiwork on this issue somewhere before then.

Nicole Shore