Aug 25, 2006

The Disposable Era



I've noticed in the past couple of years, how popular disposable cleaning products are. They range from disposable household wipes, to glass wipes, wood wipes, toilet wipes (for both the bowl and your bootie), dusters, toilet wands, magic erasers...the list goes on and on. I actually like the anti-bacterial wipes and use them on my toilets. I will refrain, however use the disposable toilet wands and dusters because I don't want to spend my entire shopping list trying to find this refill and that. I was looking into getting a Littermaid for my kitties, and what do I see? Disposable containers that you have to buy. It's like, they trap you into buying a kit, and then it's like you have a lifetime membership to their products because you are constantly buying refills. Sigh.

America has also gone antibacterial crazy, and that I realy don't mind so much. But it does make us more susceptible to having more colds because our houses are cleaner. We can't win! I recently got that Clorox multi-surface thing, and I spray it on my counters after cooking. No E. coli for me!

What boggles me, is how did we forget about the environment? We were making great strides to being more environmentally friendly, but with the outburst of these disposable products, we are just counteracting everything good we tried to do! This world is all about money money money. A few years from now, we'll be hearing studies, like if X amount of Americans use Swiffer, then X amount more garbage is in our landfills.

I'm still old school. I use regular Windex and Pledge. And I own a feather duster. I still use brushes/sponges. The only thing I really use out of the list of disposable cleaning products, is anti-bacterial wipes for surfaces. I used to own a Clorox ready mop. Will I give in to other disposable products in the future? Probably.

All I can say is, look out for those environmental studies in the future!

2 comments:

Catherine said...

I like the wipes, but yeah, all that antibacterial stuff is actually a bit counteractive for our immune system.

The more polluted our environment is, the dirty it will make our homes, adding to the housework, so when we use all the disposable stuff, we get more litter, and so on and so on....

Feather dusters are good for books!

k said...

just do like me and don't clean! ;)
j/k I've always been tempted to buy those disposable products just b/c I hate washing rags and mops after I finish using them--but alas, my mother is the chief cleaner and the old fashioned way reigns...