Cotton Flat Mop with Steel Handle

Details

A flat mop whose pads are cotton, and an SS 304 frame and telescopic handle to hang them on. Buy it as the mop with two pads, or buy the four-pad refill set on its own, which is what the headline price here is. The reason to make a point of the fibre is that this is a category where the word cotton is used loosely and where the alternative is worse than it sounds. Microfibre is polyester and polyamide, and every wash of a microfibre pad releases plastic fibre into the water going out of your house; it is genuinely better at fine dust, and that is the honest reason it took over. The quieter substitution is a pad sold as cotton that is a 60/40 cotton-polyester blend, indistinguishable by hand, cheaper to make and it sheds the same way. These are FTIR-confirmed 100 percent cotton, terry woven at 480 GSM, about 45 g a pad at 42 x 14 cm. The frame is the other place a cleaning tool cheats. Chrome-plated mild steel is what a shiny mop frame usually is, and it rusts at the swivel and at the clamp jaws inside a year, because that is where the plating cracked when it was formed. A painted handle brings the lead-in-paint question with it, since the Regulation of Lead Contents in Household and Decorative Paints Rules, 2016 caps lead at 90 ppm of the dried film and nobody tests a mop. This frame and this handle are SS 304, brushed, unpainted and unplated.

• Pads confirmed 100 percent cotton by FTIR, not a cotton-polyester blend and not microfibre
• Cotton terry, 480 GSM, 42 x 14 cm, about 45 g a pad, machine washable at 60 C, about 200 washes each
• No microfibre anywhere in the product, so nothing plastic leaves in the wash water
• Frame and telescopic handle are SS 304, brushed, unpainted and unplated, so there is no film and no plating to fail
• Handle telescopes from 90 to 140 cm and locks by a twist collar. 980 g assembled with the frame and one pad
• Fixing is elastic corner pockets, not hook-and-loop, which fills with hair and stops gripping in a few months
• Swivel head reaches under a bed and a sofa, and the joint takes a drop of oil once a year
• Refills are plain cotton pads sold four at a time, not a proprietary cartridge with a chip in it
• Cotton is heavier when wet, dries slower, and picks up fine dust less well than microfibre. We chose it anyway, because the shedding is the whole point
• Rinse and hang the pad rather than leaving it on the frame, or it will smell by the second day