Pineapple Under the Sea
(Part of my Green This House program.)
As part of my mission to make my home more eco-friendly, I did a little online snooping to find out how safe and environmental my kitchen sponge was. You can probably guess it didn’t exactly rock the ecosphere. (It was more of a “meh,” all small caps, sotto voce.) Like most cleaning sponges on the market, it’s pumped full of synthetic antibacterial disinfectants that are not only classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as pesticides, they could also be breeding drug-resistant bacteria the way antibiotics are.
The scouring pad on the flip side of the sponge is composed of nylon fibers, the production of which generates the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. (Recap: Greenhouse gases are behind global warming.) The petroleum-based nylon is also non-biodegradable, sentencing it to a millennium of landfill hell. And since we go through several sponges each year because we know they cultivate and spread bacteria, the amount of landfill waste starts to add up.
What about sea sponges? They’re natural and biodegradable, right? No dice: Sea sponges are under siege due to overharvesting and sewage discharge.
The solution, it seems, lies in 100 percent natural cellulose sponges, which are available at most hardware stores. Cellulose is a plant-based material, meaning it’s a widely available, renewable natural resource that’s also biodegradable—just as long as it doesn’t have that telltale disinfectant smell or claims to K.O. odor-causing bacteria.
(Some commercial sponges are made of polyurethane—avoid these like you would calls from the IRS.)
Soft sponges will barely tickle the caked-on gunk on pots and pans, however. (Think SpongeBob going up against Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith. Yeah, you’d laugh, too.) You can soak your pots with a solution of 2 tablespoons of baking soda per quart of water to loosen particles, then rinse and wash as usual.
For stubborn dish grime, try something like this hemp scrub cloth. (Hemp is a remarkably sustainable and versatile plant that is also naturally anti-fungal and antibacterial.) Natural Home and Garden also suggests a way of getting another use out of those plastic mesh bags you get at supermarkets by turning them into a zealous little scrubbing machine, which is a clever way of giving something non-biodegradable a second lease on life.
The Worsted Witch » Calling It a Wash said,
April 29, 2006 at 11:56 pm
[...] (A related post on antibacterial sponges can be found here.) [...]
The Worsted Witch » said,
May 21, 2007 at 2:09 pm
[...] Evidence that pesticides can cause Parkinson’s disease is stronger than ever. Tip: Anything being touted as “antibacterial” has pesticides in it, even antibacterial soaps and sponges. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Fight Grime, Twist and Shout said,
July 9, 2007 at 12:32 pm
[...] More than a year later, the perfect eco-friendly dishwashing and counter-scrubbing sponge continues to elude us. We tried a couple of 100 percent cellulose sponges (sans scrubby sides) that we found at a natural foods store, but they soon fell apart after a few vigorous turns at the sink. We’ve swerved way from sponges with nylon-based backing and try to stick to those that don’t claim to be antibacterial1, but the questionable dyes and plastic packaging leave us wanting. [...]