Brillo pad packaging

I liked the post about ‘talking a conversation for a walk’. Love how it describes the gradual sea change in topics!

So glad I asked about Brillo pads! What a wide-ranging discussion has ensued. From Brillo to sous vide to types of tree to cleaning your teeth. Love it ?!

Last time I bought Brillo Pads they were in a box. Says a lot for the state of my oven. Though I do avoid using it of course.

Brillo pads set my teeth on edge if I use them
(no, I don't use them to clean my teeth, only pans - and extremely rarely!)

Elegran I have just read this thread and just loved your remark about sous vide, being an upmarket boil-in-the-bag meal. That's exactly what I thought.

Can't remember the last time I bought Brillo pads so didn't know they were no longer in a box - I always found they disintegrated and all the bits ended up in the sink but I also used to cut them in half.

I used to clean at a couple of guest houses when I was a teenager and used Vim to clean all the bedroom sinks (long before the days of en-suite rooms) can still remember the smell - clean and fresh. I use a cleaner in a tub now which lasts forever and seems to do the same job without scratching the surfaces.

Cutting brillo pads in half? I only use them for cleaning oven shelves and the like. As posted on another thread my oven is cleaned so rarely it usually takes almost a whole pack anyway. They don't do as much as they used to do IMO ie the soapy frothy bits soon go. The thought of cleaning my oven has caused me to reach for a glass (or more) of sherry so I probably don't make sense any more.

ayokunmil| I remember vim but never cleaned my teeth with it. We did use salt when we ran out of toothpaste though and my dentist blamed my over zealous mother for wearing down the enamel on my teeth with over enthusiastic brushing!

As the subject of trees for paper has been mentioned, paper used to be made from cotton rags. Perhaps we should stop producibg all the synthetic fible clothing, bedding etc in order to use the rags for papermaking. Most clothing goes into landfill if it cznt be recycled.

I bought 3 dozen fabric cloths from Homebase. I use them for all sorts. They are used and thrown in washing machine. I rarely use the roll of paper towel. I am sure I have some brillo pads but can't remember the last time I used them...

Remeber that in the days before health and safety once in a whille we would use vim to brush our teeth usex to give them a white sparkle lol

wot, delighted to read your economical habit. Me too. Simply cut off the size I need for the job in question. Been doing this for years. Perfect.

Vim!
My mother used that to clean the bath and basin as well as the sink with Vim or Ajax. She probably scoured the surfaces away as she was a very thorough and enthusiastic cleaner; I did not inherit that gene.

I love brillo pads gets the sink as well as pots all sparkly ..the package now is awful but prefer it for washing pans ..its still a good old faithful and its cheap is vim still sold does anyone still use that

I didnt onow Brillo pads were still sold. I never liked the feel and smell of them so have not been in my cupboard for many years. The wire balls are much better and cleaner to me.

When it can be used no more, paper and cardboard rot and disintegrate. Plastic bottles don't rot for 450 years - if Shakespeare or Good Queen Bess had thrown away an empty plastic bottle it would still be around. Some plastics, like that used in plastic bags, could last even longer, up to 1000 years. If William the Conqueror had kept his arrows in a poly bag, it could still be where he tossed it away at Battle.

Paper is one of the things that can be pretty universally recycled into more paper, or into cardboard packaging, which itself can be recycled, though using cardboard boxes again and again to transport or store other goods is more sensible than using energy to recycle clean once-used boxes.

Reuse and don't overuse to start with should be the rule. When my children were young, all bits of paper that were blank on one side were saved for them to scribble or paint on. Left-over wallpaper was great for big paintings. Cardboard boxes were flattened and saved for packaging parcels in December. Now, recycling bins (and landfill bins!) are full of boxes, and sheets and sheets of almost pristine paper are thrown in, while ££££s are spent on new packaging (some of it made from those same rejected boxes, using expensive energy) and pads of virgin drawing paper, made from that same paper (using energy and bleach) .

This is the era of the throwaway society and built-in obsolescence.

Elegran, although paper is made from conifers grown as crops won't the demand for more paper and cardboard increase the need for more conifer plantations, at the possible risk to native forests?
I remember the uproar in the 70s over the likes of Terry Wogan and Cliff Richard investing in these plantations.

Aepgirl Sous vide machines are a kind of upmarket restaurant-sized version of boil-in-the-bag, much used for cooking single portions or reheating portions of precooked dishes.

Hardwood trees like oak, ash, beech or even birch are safe from papermaking. Paper isn't made by cutting down forests of longlived hardwoods, it is made from plantations of fast-growing soft woods, which are replanted like any other crop.

I am a cheapskate, so I cut mine in half!

Aepgirl I replied conversationally to someone who had made a comment about plastic. It is what Stephen Fry calls 'taking a conversation for a walk'.
Don't worry, I am sure there will be plenty of talk about Brillo pads.

We need to plant more trees for many reasons.

What are 'sous vide' machines, and what have they got to do with Brillo pads?

I dislike the way Brillo pads are packed now as they are so hard to store.

quizqueen. That is true but it would be a good start for people to stop unnecessary usage. I am going to start a campaign against sous vide machines in restaurants. Is there a more pointless use of plastic? - and virtually every cookery competition on the BBC seems to use them. If you work out the figures, assuming that only 50% of restaurants use them and only 25% of customers order something made in one, that is still billions of bags each year.

For those who complain (rightly) about plastic waste, think equally of all the trees which have to be felled to produce paper. It's a no win situation . The only solution is to drastically decrease the numbers of the human race who use and waste both of these materials.

Dare I mention plastic waste ?
Yes, you dare ninathenana
What is wrong with a cardboard box?

I tend not to buy them these days