Microfibers
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Microfibers
What is Microfiber?
Microfiber is an extremely thin fiber made from polyester or nylon. It is an excellent tool for green cleaning. Microfiber can be made from recycled content, offers significant ergonomic advantages, reduces or replaces the need for chemicals and traps and removes soil versus spreading it around.
Common Uses for Microfibers
- Dusting - Soft fiber cloths are ideal dusting tools. These require no spray polish or other chemical, yet they effectively trap and remove up to 99 percent of the soils with little elbow grease.
- Glass Cleaning - Blends of hard and soft fibers result in a cloth that is very effective at cleaning scratch-resistant surfaces with little water and no chemicals. These cloths make excellent tools for dry-cleaning mirrors and door glass
- Wet Cleaning - Fiber cloths that are woven and blended with a small amount of cotton or other water-holding material allow for an excellent wet-cleaning cloth. These are ideal in kitchens and restrooms. Requiring minimal or no chemicals, these cloths clean, polish and rinse clean for re-use
- Dust Mopping - Used dry, microfiber mops are good replacements for the traditional dust mop. They require no treatment and will collect more dust than any treated dust mop
- Wet Mopping - The same mop used damp can effectively clean lightly soiled hard floors. This is an ideal tool for break areas and small tile sections in buildings that are primarily carpet.
- Floor Finishing - Specially designed and woven microfiber that mops are better for applying floor finish than traditional rayon finish mops. They&39;re lighter (reducing fatigue and the mistakes that often result), and they also lay a virtually perfect thin coat of finish.
Microfiber offers some fantastic benefits, but it isn't perfect. You need to launder your cloths between uses and they're more expensive (per cloth) than typical janitorial wipes. However, when you look at the "all-in" cost - cost of purchase, number of launderings, how long between replacement, as well as savings in chemicals and labor.
Consider purchasing different colored cloths so that the color-coding can help the custodians separate the cloths used for dry dusting from those used for cleaning toilets and other contaminated surfaces and from those used for cleaning surfaces that cocupants frequently touch.
