It's Time to Replace Your Dish Brush
This week it was time to replace the head on my long handled dish brush, and swap out my dish brush and cellulose sponge with scrubber entirely. Like most of you, I probably let this go on too long before I replaced them. They start to get a bit run down looking. I think I've had mine for close to a year, and I use them almost every day. Probably should have swapped them out after six months, but you know… life.
This morning, while I was scrubbing a pot, I realized how good it feels to have a new, stiff scrubbing brush in hand. Food just came off like nothing (paired with my charcoal Make Nice dish block, of course), and it felt almost enjoyable to clean again. Let's be real, I'm still doing dishes, but still.
Sometimes you find a great product out there, but the working relationship with the supplier just doesn't, you know, work.
One of the things owning an eco-friendly store in Calgary meant was trying to work with vendors who carried the types of products you'd expect to find in a store like ours. One of the easiest swaps anyone can make is to stop buying dish brushes and sponges made from plastic. They degrade over time, shed microplastics into our waterways, and end up all over your dishes, pots and pans, and ultimately get ingested.
We originally had several suppliers for cellulose sponges, coconut scouring pads, dish brushes, pot scrubbers and long-handled dish brushes, but the supply wasn't always reliable, and the ones we were getting, though genuinely great, kept getting more and more expensive for us, and ultimately for you.
A Greenbriar house brand
Enter Cuprea.
You may know that all of our in-house brands are named after different Latin names for the various species of greenbriar plant. Since there are so many varieties, we've been able to find just the right name for each of our collections: Aspera, Sebeana, Ornata, and now Cuprea.
Cuprea is our line of cleaning accessories. They're made overseas, since this isn't the kind of product we've been able to find a local manufacturer for, but what they are is more environmentally friendly than their plastic-filled counterparts, and fully compostable at the end of their lifespan.
Because we source these directly from the manufacturer, we're able to keep prices lower, and even offer some great multi-buy deals on the sponges.
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Dish Brush was $11 Now $8 |
Long Handled was $13 Now $9 |
Sourcing them ourselves and branding them Cuprea got prices back down to a much more respectable place. Those two items had climbed from $7 and $9 to $11 and $13 under our old supplier before we made the switch.
The lineup covers pretty much everything you'd need to swap out under your sink.
The Compressed Cellulose Sponge and the Cellulose Sponge with Sisal Scrubber are both made from wood pulp, flat-packed, and fully compostable when they're done. Grab 5 or more of the compressed sponges and they drop to $3.00 each, or 2 or more of the sisal scrubber sponges and they drop to $3.50 each.
If you want something with more bite for stuck-on food, the Coconut Fiber Scouring Pad is the one to grab, also 2 for $5 when you stock up.
For brushes, the Dish Brush has a smooth rubber wood handle and stiff, plant-based sisal bristles built for everyday messes, and the Long Handled Dish Brush is the same idea with more reach, plus a swap-out head so you're not tossing the whole handle once the bristles wear down.
And for the pots and pans that need real muscle, there's the Pot Scrubber.
None of it is plastic, none of it sheds microplastics into the sink, and all of it breaks down when it's actually done being useful, instead of sitting in a landfill for the next few hundred years.
So if your own brush is looking a little sad and worn down (be honest, you know the one), maybe this is the week you swap it out too. It really is a small, satisfying kind of good.
Shawn
