Go Greener, Australia

How do you clean your house? If you’re like most people, you use sprays to clean your benchtops, sprays for your windows, sprays for your mirrors, some liquids for your floors. If you’re like me, you probably use an oven cleaner reluctantly - I’ve never seen one that didn’t require a complete airing of the house after it’s been opened. Maybe you’ve got a few hard-core grime removers for things like mold or calcium stains in the bathroom.

I used to have the full range of chemical bombardment cleaners in the house too. Now, I’ve gotten rid of most of them - I’ve switched to microfibre cloths. It’s worked out really well for me: no peeling skin on my hands (I’m sensitive to the chemicals), no money spent on new sprays every few weeks, no time spent wondering how to recycle the empty containers. When I need to clean something a bit out of the ordinary (like the toothpaste mess David leaves all over the sink), I tackle it with baking powder and vinegar first, then finish up with the cloths. I find it faster to clean with them too, which is a bonus because I enjoy.. well, pretty much anything, really, more than I enjoy cleaning

The microfibre cloths create a static attraction when they’re dry, which picks up dust and loose dirt. When you wet them, they use capillary force to suck greasy dirt up into the cloth, which is only released when you wash it with laundry powder or liquid (like shampooing your hair). They don’t leave any dirt behind, or a chemical residue either.

They have huge environmental benefits:

• fewer plastics used for spray bottles and disposable sponges, which is great since plastic is made by burning oil
• fewer plastics left in landfill for years to come - not all of them can be recycled, and the recycling is energy intensive too
• less water used to get things clean, very important in Australia right now
• less pollution inside your home, or released to the atmosphere, caused by airborne particles of the cleaning chemicals
• less chemicals washed down your drains, which have to be processed out

For the last few years, I’ve been using the microfibre cloths I got from the supermarket, and they’ve mostly been great. However, my kitchen and bathroom mitts wore out very quickly. On the weekend, I went to an Enjo demonstration at my sister’s house. I wanted to see if Enjo products are better than the ones I had, and if the company’s reputation for being environmentally friendly lived up to our standards.

The demo was fun, and we all had a turn at using the cleaning mitts. The demonstrator explained how the microfibre works, how to clean your cloths and use them properly. The quality of the mitts is better than the ones I’d tried before - they seem sturdier and easier to use. There’s a range of products for each room of the house, but I suspect that’s so that they can sell more, rather than because the kitchen mitt is vastly different from the bathroom mitt.

Enjo has embraced being environmentally friendly. They show buyers how to care for the cloths so that they last as long as possible, and take your used cloths back for recycling. They show you how to use the smallest amount of water to clean with, and suggest you switch your other cleaning products (laundry powder, dishwashing liquid) to low-phosphate types. There’s no fancy plastic or cardboard packaging to throw out. I’d like to see them switch to recycled paper in their brochures and paperwork, as they seem to go through a lot, and describe the eco-benefits on the website. But the owner of the business has become one of Al Gore’s Climate Change Ambassadors, which I think shows a commitment to the cause, and I expect that in future they’ll introduce more eco-friendly changes to how they run things.

So now, the important factor: how much do they cost? The Enjo cloths and other items were all expensive, about $30-$40. My supermarket brands had cost about $10 for a similar product. Cleaning sprays usually cost under $10, but you need to buy them frequently. Anyone who’s bought Tupperware or compact fluorescent lightbulbs understands the decision to pay more up-front for a quality product that will last for a long time, replacing other more disposable products you might have chosen. And the environmental benefits are significant. However, if you’re not sure if microfibre cloths are for you, there’s no reason you shouldn’t try out a cheaper brand from the supermarket before spending the big bucks on Enjo.

I’ve bought the kitchen pack from Enjo. I’m going to try to clean the oven as instructed, and if it works then I can finally throw that stinky oven bomb spray out