MNN - Mother Nature Network

If you decided to ditch your dishwasher and soak your dishes in harvested rainwater instead — or if, like me, your apartment just doesn’t have a dishwasher — check out these green dish washing tools that’ll go nicely with your eco-friendly dish washing liquid:

 

Twist Loofah Sponge. The eco version of those artificial yellow and green sponge-scrubbie combos, Twist’s green cleaning tool has a soft spongy white cellulose side and a scrubby loofah side — all of which is biodegradable once you’re done with it!

 

The sponge part works great — and holds up nicely, retaining its shape and fluffiness better than the artificial yellow sponges that start looking grimy and torn up pretty quickly. The loofah side, however, isn’t quite as scrubby as the artificial green things — and required a little more elbow grease on my part. I’ve dealt with this by washing dishes promptly, instead of letting leaving them until food bits are dried and crusty and tough to get off.

 

Twist offers a lot of other cleaning products too, one of which may work better for you. You can get a two-pack of the loofah sponge for $4.28 at Amazon.

 

Skoy Cloth. These reusable cloths are like a good kitchen towel — except spongier, more absorbent, and easier to wring out. Made of cotton and wood-pulp cellulose, Skoy Cloths are 100 percent biodegradable and easy to disinfect — just microwave it wet for a minute or two! Since the cloths are made without chlorine and are decorated with water-based inks, they’re safe to use as washcloths, too.

 

Get a 4-pack for $5.99 or a year’s subscription (8 cloths every 3 months) for $11.98 at Skoy Cloth's website.

 

Twist does, BTW, have a similar cloth made from sustainable pine trees called European Sponge Cloth — but I haven’t tried them out myself. Anyone have a first-hand opinion on these?