About Sustainable Shopping 3: In the Kitchen, Wiping Scrubbing and Scraping

Wiping

Kitchen roll can be paper made from new wood, or recycled; it can be bleached or unbleached, dyed or undyed.

Bleached and dyed paper made from new wood is surely pointless for these jobs. It's using forestry which could go for something better than a few seconds of blotting before being binned and buried. If it is FSC approved wood, well so what – wasting wood is still wrong even if it is FSC approved wood. Bleaching and colouring involve pollution from chlorine and other chemicals. It's not wallpaper - the look of it doesn't matter, there's no justification for the pollution involved in making it look pretty.

Recycled paper is much better because, apart from not wasting a valuable resource it requires less processing. It should of course be unbleached and uncoloured.

I shouldn't have much trouble cleaning up my act in this respect then, as most supermarkets have at least one line of recycled paper kitchen towels and they are available in bulk online. But ... ...

What about 'non paper'?

Reusable 'non paper' cleaning cloths are enthusiastically marketed by 'ethical' suppliers – made from cotton or bamboo (i.e. cellulose derived from bamboo). Is it better to use these than it is to use paper?

Well here's another question: why would we go out and buy squares of cloth to wipe stuff up with? I am old and I experienced the transition after World War 2 from deprivation and austerity to the present era of plenty (at least for many of us). Back then we used to cut up old cloth items such as sheets and towels, which had come to the end of their useful lives, for just this purpose. True, they might only have been good for a few goes, or even only one, before they needed washing. But they were plentiful so they could be lobbed into a bucket until there were enough to make a washer load. (In the pre-washer days my mum used to boil them.)

We have to be careful that, in attempting to solve one problem, we don't create another, as this product from Ethical Superstore seems to do. The Ecozone Multisurface Cloth is marketed as a means of wiping without having to use chemical products such as surface cleaners. But it carries a health warning: 'Please note: This product contains microplastics'.

Sometimes navigating a way through this kind of cost benefit trade off is complex and difficult. But surely not here. I certainly won't be introducing yet another source of damage into the environment in order to save me from using soapy water or a sustainable surface cleaner.

See:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/ecozone/ecozone-microfibre-multi-surface-cloth---80g/

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

and:

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html

Here's Ethical Consumer on the Subject:

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/search?keywords=microplastics

So: I see the sense of using washable fabric wiping cloths instead of single use paper. But I'm wary of buying products manufactured for that purpose, first because I would have to verify the sustainability of the material used (see: Bamboo )  and second because it seems a waste of money. I'm going to do what my mum did in the olden days – I'll cut up old stuff to use. I realise, though, there are times when hygiene requires disposable stuff, and I will have some unbleached recycled paper towels for occasional use.

Scrubbers Scourers and Brushes

What about when I need something a bit more aggressive than a cloth? For years, like most people I guess, I have used those sponge blocks that have on one side a harder more abrasive kind of sponge. Now that I'm aware of the problem of microfibres getting into the environment (of which more, in a separate post, coming soon) I realise, just by looking at them, that they are a serious shedder of those things. The two shown here, used and unused from the same pack, show just how much

microplastic I have

sent down the

plughole into the wider world, to wash around out there forever. Who knows, I might end up eating it in my fish dinner one day. And now it's no longer any use, the remaining bit will be discarded into landfill, along with countless others, to remain there for the rest of eternity. And I reach for another …

Well not this time. There have always been metal versions of course, with or without soap, and they work very well. To be honest I don't know much about the environmental implications of the manufacture of these things. But they have to be better than plastic. They will in time rust

away to become once more the Earth's most common element, iron, I suppose. At least if I end up eating that it'll do me some good.

But I should be able to do better. There are natural products which can do the job.

For instance the dear old loofah! Without knowing quite what it is, I was always familiar with it as a bathroom 'sponge' of course - but I find that as well as having a comedy name, it's a plant, providing natural material for all sorts of products. Here's an alternative to those foam kitchen sponges:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/loofco/loofco-washing-up-pad---twin-pack/

And I see that Ethical Superstore has much else made of loofah. Other retailers are of course available but I'm not going to cite any more – they're easily Google-able.

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: You can grow your own loofah!

See: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/knightshayes/features/grow-your-own-kitchen-sponges-loofahs

Wikipedia on loofah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa

Instead of the ubiquitous plastic dishwashing brush this looks a far better product, two suppliers here:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/ecoliving/ecoliving-fsc-100-wooden-dish-brush-with-replaceable-head/

https://www.boobalou.co.uk/plastic-free-brushes/page/1/

Bearing in mind the untrustworthiness of eco-claims I checked this out. Its bristles are made of something called Tampico and as far as I can tell it seems a thoroughly praiseworthy product. (Until some asshole invents a way of pouring corrosives all over it to make cellulose gloop at least.)

See:

https://www.tampicofiber.net/fiber-production

and Wikipedia, which says:

'Ixtle, also known by the trade name Tampico fiber, is a stiff plant fiber obtained from a number of Mexican plants, chiefly species of Agave and Yucca...'

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtle

Coconut fibre (coir) has long been a useful natural product. We have long been wiping our feet on it and it has many uses around the house. Here's an example:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/loofco/loofco-oven-tray---pan-scraper/

This one, though, shows up our need for awareness of the fact that our vast population can do little without heading into environmental difficulties. Coir is an undoubtedly sustainable product, properly handled. But things can go wrong. The traditional method of production does create some pollution, though nowhere near as noxious as rayon for instance. But a huge switch of consumption to it from plastics would amplify that pollution possibly to a dangerous level. There are, though, more up to date production methods which minimise pollution. I think this will be a pattern in the future with most natural products we use: caution, and the constant refining of production methods. There's a very good summary here:

https://ecoworldonline.com/coir-the-natural-fiber-from-coconut-husk/

Quick Reference Summary:

• For wiping jobs it's time to set aside pointlessly decorated and bleached virgin paper.

• I will treat manufactured 'non-paper' products with suspicion. They unnecessarily use resources and might even, in some cases, be worse than the problem they mean to solve.

• For everyday use I will make my own wiping cloths out of scrap material.

• I will keep a small amount of recycled paper towel around the place for those few occasions when circumstances demand something disposable.

• For tough scouring and scraping jobs I will use natural materials such as coir, loofah and Tampico.

• I understand that, as demand rises, it's possible for even basically inoffensive natural products to become polluting if they are not produced and processed in the right way.