Rant: Keurigs and Swiffers and Wet Wipes

In an earlier post, I railed against peoples' overuse of paper products (and provided examples of alternatives) and our ingrained proclivity to mindlessly obey marketers' wishes. Okay maybe I wasn't quite that harsh, but I have some new targets that I think even more insidious, particularly because at least paper products can decompose (especially when put in a green bin and not the garbage). THESE items are created to throw away and will NOT decompose.

We now have Keurig machines, Swiffers and a wide variety of wipes. Probably there are other products (I'm sure I'll get to those), but these three items are terrible!

Not only are Keurig machines shoddy pieces of machinery that tend to break down within a year, but they are not easily repaired, so on top of the Keurig cups and their knock-offs (which are not recyclable) going directly to landfill, so are the machines! Here is a picture from a recent Facebook post of a small appliance repair person, who is taking Keurig machines to the dump because they are not worth repairing:

A quote from Joe Young, who took this picture: 

All of the machines in that picture I took are the Commercial Grade machines. Commercial Grade usually means they are manufactured to a higher standard and are built with repair in mind.There are no internal replacement parts available from the manufacturer. Sure one can go on eBay and buy cannibalize parts from other broken down machines. That's fine for the individual who likes to tinker at home, but not for a business application where we have many brewers placed at clients in a 150 mile radius of our base. When I fix a piece of equipment it needs to stay fixed, at least for a good long while.
Also that van full of brewers in the photo were purchased by my employer and if they could be fixed they would certainly insist that be the case. I don't think I would still be employed as service manager if the boss thought I was just throwing away his money away.

Even the inventor of the machine is appalled at what he has unleashed. Some statistics contend that the number of K-cups, as they are called, discarded in a year could encircle the globe 10;5 times (2014).

Here is an excellent article : http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/

Swiffers and wet wipes -- yes it is easy to pull out a non-decomposable something or other (who knows what it's made out of and what chemicals lurk within...) and attach it to a little plastic object (also non-recyclable because it's made out of plastic) and go and dust and wipe stuff. But what's wrong with rags and mops? Is this all that much easier? If you have already purchased a swiffer handle, there are hundreds of places online that demonstrate methods of making replacement covers from old towels and such; some with no sewing required! Just pop in washer and re-use. Think of all the money you'll save and all the fumes you won't inhale. Pinterest is a good place to start.

And now there's wipes for everything! Wipe your backside (and hopefully not flushing it down the toilet!), wipe your counter, etc. etc. Washcloth anyone? Dishrag? There is a cautionary tale out of England resulting from flushing wet wipes down the toilet -- congealed fat put down drains had attached itself to wetwipes also in the sewers that had become lodged there. A 10-ton lump evolved and basically broke the system leading to costly infrastructure repairs! Whole story here: fatberg

All sorts of alternative wipes solutions can be found on the internet. I have just made up a batch of home-made kitchen wipes with rags and normal household products and so far am quite pleased.