Eco-friendly cleaner newcomer, Replenish, recently came out with their first product that provides buyers with just an empty spray bottle and a pod that contains a concentrated cleaner. The only part Replenish doesn’t provide is the water to turn that empty bottle into a full one.
It’s up to buyers to provide the water. Hopefully, not bottled water, because that would defeat the purpose. Also, hopefully, not Evian water, because that would be pretentious.
The purpose of this setup is to encourage buyers to reuse the spray bottle, which means less plastic in their recycle bins and more room for Bud Light bottles and failed bong making attempts in glass blowing class.
Each pod of concentrated cleaner is good for four full bottles. To make a full bottle, screw the pod to the empty spray bottle, turn everything upside down and squeeze the pod to get the concentrate into the reservoir in the empty spray bottle. Then add water and mix. The concentrate is 98 percent plant-based, biodegradable, non-toxic and pH neutral.
Replenish comes in three varieties: Sun Lemon, Green Tea and Fresh Lavender. A reusable bottle with a pod of concentrated cleaner costs $7.99. A replacement pod will set you back $3.99.
Gizmo was so cute in the movie Gremlins. Those big eyes made me want to pet him and his soft fur made me want to use him as a mop to clean my floors.
If I ever get the opportunity to clean my apartment with a mogwai, I might use Method’s new Dilutable Cleaner.
Although since I would be adding water to the super concentrated cleaner and the cleaner itself contains water, Gizmo would probably multiply and Mr. Wing would come to my door and tell me that I’m not ready to properly care for a mogwai.
The Method Dilutable Cleaner only comes in once scent: citrus leaf. It cleans using eco-friendly, biodegradable ingredients like plant-based cleaners and natural mineral boosters. It’s available now in stores and comes in a 25-ounce bottle.
I’m feeling much better about my attempts to thwart aliens from reading my mind, prevent cell phone waves from reaching my brain and to prohibit Martha Stewart from brainwashing me through the picture radio, thanks to the new Reynolds Wrap Foil from 100% Recycled Aluminum. Now I can use an entire roll of it to make a foil hat and not feel bad when I have to make a new one the next day since the power of the foil hat lasts only 24 hours.
It’s made from post-consumer and post-industrial aluminum, which may include: scraps from industrial cable, automobile components, cookware, gutters, siding, and stadium seats. So perhaps, if you’re lucky, sometime next year you might have a small part of Yankee Stadium or, if you’re unlucky, you might get a little bit of Shea Stadium this year. The Reynolds Wrap Foil from 100% Recycled Aluminum is as clean and safe to use with food as regular Reynolds Wrap Foil made from virgin aluminum.
Even the packaging is made from recycled and eco-friendly materials. It’s available in 50-square-foot rolls in standard strength and 35-square-foot rolls in heavy duty strength, which is the strength of choice for those looking to prevent aliens from reading your mind.
The new eco-friendly Ziploc evolve sandwich and storage bags are made from a new resin that uses 25% less plastic than their regular bags, are manufactured using approximately 50% renewable wind energy and packaged in a 100% recycled box, with at least 35% postconsumer content.
While all of this might be fine and dandy to the casual environmentalist, the maniacal, Captain Planet costume-wearing treehugger would point to the fact that if these bags are so evolved, why is the E in “evolve” lowercase and why don’t they have powers like the characters on Heroes?
A level-headed (not crazy) treehugger who doesn’t dress up in tights and paints their skin blue would probably wonder why Ziploc didn’t do more, since most of their bags probably end up in landfills and are difficult to recycle because they’re made out of #4 plastics.
The Ziploc evolve bags seem like a step in the right direction, but it would be more impressive if all of their bags were made this way.
The bags are available in sandwich ($2.49), quart ($3.49) and gallon ($3.49) sizes.
I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m in my shower I have to be completely naked, because just like I believe a bed is meant for sleeping and sex, a shower is meant for nudity. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, whether it’s showering, cleaning the shower, or butchering the Cyndi Lauper song “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” just as bad as Miley Cyrus, I have to be naked within my shower’s three walls and shower curtain. Because I’m buck naked when I’m wiping down my “cleansing cubicle” I don’t like the cleaner I use to consist of stuff that may melt off my junk or makes me smell like a high school janitor who took a bath in Pine-Sol. Fortunately, I found a bathroom cleaner that I can get all hippie naked with — the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner.
There are several elements I like about my new shower partner. It’s non-toxic, biodegradable, and environmentally friendly, but perhaps its best attribute is the fact that it’s bottled in an actual 1-liter soda bottle that someone once drank out of. It’s cool to think that there is a possibility that I littered a park with this bottle, someone picked it up, and Terracycle then used it to bottle their cleaning products. I guess something good can come from littering.
Of course, all of this eco-friendliness would be meaningless if the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner couldn’t get my bathroom clean, but I gave my entire bathroom a good spray and wipe with this and I have to say that it did as well as any other product I’ve used. It easily cleaned the gunk in between the shower tiles, wiped away the crap on my sink fixtures, got rid of the stuff in the sink basin, and it made the shit on my mirror disappear, but it didn’t do well with troublesome hard water stains.
If you’re going to use the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner, don’t expect your bathroom to smell like potpourri, a florist, or “lemon fresh” after spraying it all over your bathroom. There are no fragrances or dyes in it, which technically makes this cleaner au naturel, like me when I’m in the shower or when I’m walking around my apartment. Its scent can be best described as sterile, which is not a horrible scent, but it’s also not a pleasant one. With most cleaning products, after I spray it on, I have to leave the room because the fumes overwhelm me and cause me to gag, like the extreme gleefulness and repetition I’m exposed to while riding the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland would, but it didn’t happen with this product.
Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner, because it does an excellent job of cleaning in an environmentally friendly way at a reasonable price. It may not be the prettiest smelling product on the market, but a wise man once said, “The scent of a stripper does not equate to their ability to work the pole.”
Item: Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner Price: FREE (retails for $2.99) Size: 1 liter Purchased at: Given by Terracycle Rating: 9 out of 10 Pros: Cleans just as well as most other products. Reuses an actual 1-liter soda bottle. Reasonably priced. No chemical fumes to overwhelm. Non-toxic. Biodegradable. Environmentally friendly. Cons: No pleasant scent. Didn’t do well at all with hard water stains. Not too widely available (can be picked up at Office Max and Target). Strippers who don’t know how to work the pole. It’s a Small World ride.
The new eco-friendly Ziploc evolve sandwich and storage bags are made from a new resin that uses 25% less plastic than their regular bags, are manufactured using approximately 50% renewable wind energy and packaged in a 100% recycled box, with at least 35% postconsumer content. 