Cellulose Sponge Cloths

Details

The best thing in a disposables aisle is usually the thing that stops you buying disposables. This is a cloth of 70 percent regenerated cellulose and 30 percent cotton, with no plastic in it at all. It is worth being straight about how a cellulose sponge cloth is made, because plant-based is a phrase that quietly implies no chemistry was involved. It is made by the viscose route: wood pulp dissolved in sodium hydroxide and carbon disulphide, regenerated in an acid bath with sodium sulphate crystals mixed through and then washed out, which is what leaves the open pore structure. The finished cloth carries none of that, and carbon disulphide is a genuine occupational hazard at the mill, and both of those things are true at once. Absorbency is measured rather than adjectival: 14 times its dry weight, by 60 seconds immersion and 30 seconds free drainage, so a 10 gram cloth holds about 140 ml. And it does what the bin liners in this range cannot, which is compost in a home pit at ordinary Indian temperature, roughly eight weeks, because cellulose and cotton are what a compost heap eats and no thermophilic stage is needed.

• No polyester, no nylon, no synthetic microfibre, so it sheds no plastic into the wash water. That shedding is the quiet reason a microfibre cloth is not the sustainable option it is sold as
• No dye, no print, no fragrance and no antibacterial treatment. A silver or triclosan finish sheds biocide into the drain, does not stop the cloth smelling anyway, and contributes to resistance for no benefit you can perceive
• Because there is no antibacterial finish, here is the honest hygiene position. A damp cellulose cloth left balled up in a sink will smell within two days. It is a wet, food-rich sponge at room temperature and that is physics, not a defect. Wring it out and hang it flat, and boil it five minutes weekly or send it through the machine with the regular load. If you will not do that, buy the kitchen towel instead and we would rather you did
• Size 17 cm by 20 cm, 2 mm thick dry and about 4 mm wet. Board-stiff when dry, soft and absorbent two seconds under the tap, which is normal
• About nine months of daily use per cloth
• What it replaces, with the sum shown: at three sheets a day a 60-sheet kitchen towel roll lasts 20 days, so nine months is about 14 rolls. At the six-roll price that is roughly Rs 931 of kitchen towel displaced by one Rs 83 cloth
• Compost it at end of life. Cut it up first, and not if its last job was the degreaser or a bleach
• Paper band only, no plastic wrap
• Cost per cloth is Rs 83.00 at the pack of 3 and Rs 74.83 at the pack of 6