The commercials air during any hour of television on any station. Brands vary, but the setup hardly ever changes. A woman confronted with a whole house of dust: the task is presented as daunting, the simple solution (to just buckle down and wipe off shelves with a wet rag), impossible. Then the product emerges, a compact broom or hand wand that can sweep and wipe up the mess in an instant. The impossible job looks fun, and the cleanup afterward a breeze. Rather than wash a cloth or shake out a dusty broom, the woman just throws away the microfiber rag. The advertising implies that disposable products make life easy, but it doesn’t market them as earth friendly cleaning products, because they’re not. Waste remains one of the largest ecological concerns of our modern age, and these brooms, wands, and toilet scrubbers all contribute to the problem.
The classification of earth friendly cleaning products goes beyond the chemicals put into household cleaners. The tools, brushes, and sponges people use matter almost as much. To really create an eco friendly home, people have to reduce everything: water, electricity, greenhouse gases, and certainly waste. Disposable brooms and toilet brushes might shave a few minutes off a weekly chore, but their inserts immediately go to build up landfills and the floating islands of plastic in the ocean. In no way can they be considered earth friendly cleaning products. When you go to purchase cleaning supplies, look at the ingredient labels of cleaners and buy brooms you can reuse for months or years to come.