Coir and Steel Scrubbers

Details

Two scrubbers, neither of them plastic. The coir pad is coconut husk fibre bound with natural rubber latex, firm enough for a burnt tawa and safe on cast iron seasoning. The steel spiral is a single SS 304 ribbon, 0.04 by 0.9 mm in section, wound tight, for a cooker base and a deep steel pan. The green foam pad they replace is worth describing accurately, because most people have never been told what it is: a polyurethane foam block faced with a nylon web loaded with abrasive grit, glued together, and it sheds both the foam and the nylon down the drain from the first wash to the last. Both of the cheats here are substitutions of the same kind. Dyed polypropylene mesh is sold as coir, and it looks close enough in a packet; it does not soften with use, it does not compost, and it sheds. And plain or galvanised mild steel wool is sold as a steel scrubber; it is cheaper, it rusts inside a week in a wet sink, and it leaves grey marks on the steel you were cleaning. The home test for that one takes seven days and no equipment: leave one wet on the sink edge. SS 304 comes back the same. Anything else has bloomed.

• Coir is coconut husk fibre, Cocos nucifera, confirmed by microscopy, bound with natural rubber latex rather than a synthetic binder
• Steel spirals are SS 304 ribbon, alloy-checked, 0.04 by 0.9 mm section, 40 g each
• No polyurethane foam, no nylon abrasive web, no glued sponge layer and no moulded-in detergent block
• Nothing here sheds microplastic into the drain, because there is no plastic in either of them
• Safe on cast iron seasoning, which a synthetic scourer strips in one wash
• Coir composts at the end of its life. The steel goes to the scrap dealer, who will actually take 304
• Honest life: coir about six weeks of daily washing, steel about six months
• Coir is harsher on hands than a foam pad and it will not lift baked-on sugar the way an abrasive nylon web does. That is the trade, and the nylon web is the thing going down the drain
• Neither is for the coated pan. Use a soft cloth there, and there is only one coated pan on this shelf anyway