If you decided to ditch your dishwasher and soak your dishes in harvested rainwater instead — or if, like me, your apartment just doesn’t have a dishwasher — check out these green dish washing tools that’ll go nicely with your eco-friendly dish washing liquid:
Twist Loofah Sponge. The eco version of those artificial yellow and green sponge-scrubbie combos, Twist‘s green cleaning tool has a soft spongy white cellulose side and a scrubby loofah side — all of which is biodegradable once you’re done with it!
The sponge part works great — and holds up nicely, retaining its shape and fluffiness better than the artificial yellow sponges that start looking grimy and torn up pretty quickly. The loofah side, however, isn’t quite as scrubby as the artificial green things — and required a little more elbow grease on my part. I’ve dealt with this by washing dishes promptly, instead of letting leaving them until food bits are dried and crusty and tough to get off.
Twist offers a lot of other cleaning products too, one of which may work better for you. A 2-pack of the Loofah Sponge costs $4.99 at The Green Life in Santa Monica, where I picked them up, or at Whole Foods and some other local retail stores. Online, you can get them for $4.28 at Amazon.
Skoy Cloth. These reusable cloths were a hit at the recent Go Green Expo. A Skoy cloth’s like a good kitchen towel — except spongier, more absorbent, and easier to wring out.
Made of cotton and wood-pulp cellulose, Skoy Cloths are 100% biodegradable and easy to disinfect — just microwave it wet for a minute or two! Since the cloths are made without chlorine and are decorated with water-based inks, they’re safe to use as washcloths too.
Unfortunately, the only place in L.A. you can pick these up right now is Vernare in West Hollywood. They’re available online though: Get a 4-pack for $5.99 or a year’s subscription (8 cloths every 3 months) for $11.98.
Twist does, BTW, have a similar cloth made from sustainable pine trees called European Sponge Cloth — but I haven’t tried them out myself. Anyone have a first-hand opinion on these?
Images via twistclean.com and skoycloth.com
I have the Twist European Sponge Cloth but so far I’ve only used it once — to wipe down my yoga mat. So far so good. (Are these the same thing as the ShamWow?)
Comment by Jody — February 5, 2009 @ 11:38 pm
The problem with the Twist European sponge cloth is it is MADE IN CHINA! Here is the link to the interview where the CEO of TWIST admits it is a Chinese product – http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/nov/19/transcript-brian-ross-chat/
False advertising if you ask me!
Try SKOY cloth. It is made in Germany, which I am told is still in Europe, making it much more of a European sponge cloth! I have been to Germany many times and I can tell you the German’s think about the environment. They use SKOY cloth NOT Sham Wow which is a petro chemical based product that does not bio-degrade, and is not sustainable (fossil fuels will run out – That’s a fact!). SKOY is packaged right here in the USA with no plastic bag which is more than Twist product can say. SKOY is better all around!
Comment by Eshowegirl — February 6, 2009 @ 10:53 am
I believe ShamWow’s synthetic and nonbiodegradable, and thus not the same thing as these eco sponges / cloths :)
Comment by Siel — February 9, 2009 @ 6:46 pm