Saw an ad for the above product the other day (you can watch the ad here). Being the owner of a pet with a seemingly limitless capacity to coat every surface in my apartment with its fur, I was intrigued. On my last trip to the grocery store, I took a look at it. Two rollers covered in a lint brush-type fabric, working together to carry lint and fur into the domed receptacle above them. $5. Disposable.
Disposable? Um, why? Lint brushes can be cleaned, and I didn't see any replacement rollers for sale near the product. The reason it is disposable is because it cannot be emptied. You're supposed to use it until it's full, then toss it and spring another $5 to replace it.
This, to me, represents probably the worst example of what I would call the "Swifferization" of modern cleaning product design. It would have been straightforward to have added a small door to the Fabric Sweeper to allow emptying and reuse of the product. Come to think of it, I could probably just carve one in there myself. But the negligible cost of adding this feature to the product means the loss of big revenue if consumers only buy one. As a result, what should be a durable good becomes a disposable good for no other reason than money. More plastic, more waste, more resources to produce and transport it.
What can be done? There was a time when one bought a feather duster, broom, or mop with the same regularity that we might buy a vacuum cleaner. I don't feel that boycotting such products, or appealing to consumers' desire for sustainable design, will have the power to overcome the convenience that disposable design offers. Perhaps more desirable, enjoyable designs could work, a la the Michael Graves product line at Target. The task, then, is to show that the additional cost of such products are actually less in the long run than repeatedly replacing a similar disposable product over and over. Making things that people want to have, and keep, is how durability will beat disposability.
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