Eh, Not Convinced

I must really be a tough sell. I'm just not convinced.

A great wonderful cool Green Festival was last weekend at the LA Convention Center. Similar festivals and expos have failed, but this one was VERY good. I chose to focus on the good booths and try to ignore the greenwashing, which, thankfully, was not in abundance. A little product did catch my eye, though. Biodegradable wet wipes. Um, OK. I'll look.

Well, let's get past the plastic packaging and the little plastic container that is somehow necessary to use this product. Let me give it a try. It's a little pellet of dried "natural fiber"... a little dried thing of what she said was rayon. Yeah, I'll get back to that. she puts a few drops of water on it and POOF it's a wet wipe. Normally I am charmed by these things. I find them slightly magical. (What can I say, I am easily amused) OK. Great... I have a wipe. Great... it's biodegradable. Now what? I'm sure this is a great thing, they say it's superior because regular wipes dry out and go to waste and these start out dry.... so... Um... Yay?  Am I excited now? Do Harold Angels sing when we make these wet? No?

Yeah, not convinced. Let's re-visit that rayon thing. Rayon is "natural", sure, but are you aware of the chemicals that are involved in getting rayon fiber but it's a lot. Rayon is from cellulose, and it is a buttload of nasty stuff that it takes to make that cellulose into nice fabric. I used to love it til I knew. So unless they are making these from leftover rayon scraps and threads... yeah, no, I can't even sell myself on that one. Rayon = Not So Eco. Make them out of something else and ditch all that horrible packaging, and I MIGHT be halfway convinced that this is a valid product.

In the meantime, I surely can do without. I know, no kids, when you have kids, you NEED wet wipes. Uh huh. Go ahead with that. It's all fine. Nothing to see here. I just fail to see what is so "green" about this product. To me, it's just another piece of plastic noise that we don't need.