ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Why do manufacturers spend so much time, energy and money on developing man-made
cloths and wipers that look and behave like their natural counterparts? ECJ poses this question to wiper companies.

In the cleaning industry we are constantly hearing about new types of wipers, microfibres and non-woven cloths that are said to have “the look and feel of a textile”.

These may be likened to cotton cloths, dusters or chamois leathers and are claimed to offer similar levels of absorbency and efficacy as their natural counterparts.

It seems ironic that so much R&D energy is going towards creating products that resemble natural alternatives as closely as possible. And it begs the question: why not simply use the originals?

People feel comfortable with textiles – and this means there is an ongoing demand for products that replicate them according to SCA’s global non-woven materials development director Lars Fingal.
“Worn-out clothes have traditionally been used for wiping,” he said. “We only began coming up with alternatives to rags in the 1970s.

“Textiles are what people relate to, and imitating them has been going on for years. For example polyester was developed in the clothing industry as an alternative to silk and rayon has been created to replace cotton.”

However he says the use of natural products alone is neither viable nor sustainable. “Silk is rare and expensive while the production of cotton requires a great deal of space,” he said. “If there weren’t any man-made alternatives to cotton its cultivation would potentially take up all the land we have. So we need alternatives.”

Most Tork non-woven products are designed to imitate textiles while offering key advantages over their natural counterparts, according to Fingal. For example, Tork Kitchen Cleaning Cloth is said to have a cotton feel and a bulky consistency to enable it to protect the hands against heat, while Tork Heavy-Duty Cleaning Cloth is claimed to reduce solvent use by up to 41 per cent compared with traditional rags.

“A major advantage of man-made products is the fact that they have actually been designed for wiping,” he said. “A textile will sometimes be effective, sometimes not. But all non-wovens are fit for purpose and of a consistent quality while containing none of the buttons or zips that you might find in a rag.

Less storage

“Non-woven wipers also require less storage because they are either packed flat or in rolls whereas textiles tend to be supplied in a big bag or box. This takes up space and the ragbag may not be close at hand when the operative needs it. Man-made wipers, on the other hand, can be supplied in wall-mounted or freestanding dispensers and located close to where people use them.”

He says non-wovens also offer hygiene benefits over textiles. “You can wipe a surface and then throw the wiper away whereas you will need to reuse a textile several times,” he said.

Besides all these advantages, many customers still feel emotionally attached to traditional textiles, he says. “For this reason we try to give them what they want. For example we deliberately colour our Tork Industrial Cleaning Cloths grey to resemble the rags and laundered cloths that are regularly used in heavy industry.”

Manager of Vileda Professional’s science and training centre Dr Jochen Wirsching agrees that people tend to prefer textiles because they are used to them. “A cloth needs to be able to fit comfortably into the human hand,” he said. “Our hands are flexible tools that can carry out a variety of tasks such as cleaning large tabletops, window frames, nooks and crannies. For this reason, any cloth we
use needs to have the drapability of a classic textile.”

Outdated

He claims that traditional textiles are somewhat outdated. “They dry out more slowly and break down more rapidly during laundering,” said Wirsching. “They also have a poorer cleaning performance and tend to leave watermarks behind. Textiles have provided us with many positives but this is what innovation is all about: creating superior solutions.”

Vileda makes a range of cloths that can actually be placed in the textiles category, according to Wirsching. “Textiles as we know them cover a wide field,” he said. “They can be soft and dense or stiff and meshed.

“The vast majority of Vileda Professional’s wiping products are durable and launderable and we use all three of the main textile manufacturing technologies: weaving, knitting and non-woven production. So our man-made products are basically textiles.”

Vileda’s products are made from microfibre, cotton and PVAmicro which is an ultra-absorbent foam/gel-coated material. These cloths are said to be capable of removing bacteria and spores from surfaces as well as general cleaning.

“Combining these characteristics in one cloth is a truly time-consuming and expensive development process,” said Wirsching. “For some of our products the post-treatment of the material is more expensive than the base textile.”

Products include microfibre non-wovens such as NanoTech micro and QuickStar micro. “While these are not as thick as a classical cotton cloth they are extremely dense in their structure,” said Wirsching. “This enables them to remove bacteria and spores while also leaving a streak-
free finish.

“Our PVAmicro has a base material of microfibre which is then covered by an ultra-absorbent PVA gel. Making this is a complex procedure and the result is a cleaning cloth designed for sensitive surfaces that still has the feel of a textile.”

Managing director of Ecotech Europe Paul Brownhill agrees that customers tend to be sentimentally attached to natural products. “Textiles have been used for cleaning for more than 200 years,” he said. “The main features of a textile are bulk, strength and absorbency so it is important to be able to emulate these qualities in a manufactured cleaning cloth.”

Time-consuming

Making such products can be time-consuming and expensive, he adds. “This is because man-made wipes and cloths need to be fit for use in different applications and capable of performing according to certain criteria,” he said. “The feel, performance and look of a product are all fundamental to whether or not it will suitable for use.”

Ecotech Europe products with textile qualities include microfibre cloths made from a polyester and polyamide mix that are said to be able to withstand more than 500 machine washes. The company also offers EnvirowipePlus cleaning cloths made from viscose and polyester that can be machine-washed up to 15 times.

Like other manufacturers, Brownhill claims that man-made products offer benefits over their natural counterparts. “Traditional cloths such as cotton dishcloths, dusters and so on are not as hygienic as non-wovens,” he said. “Manufactured cloths have been designed for specific tasks so they outperform cotton cloths. For instance how many times have you polished your shoes with a yellow duster and left fibres behind on your shoes as a result?”

However he believes there is growing demand for natural-looking products. “We are also seeing a trend for environmentally-responsible cloths while in some areas  – such as in the  food service and hygiene sectors - it is important cloths look good as well as perform well,” he said.

All microfibre products have the look and feel of textiles according to Greenspeed product manager Bert Lagarde. The company makes microfibre mops and cloths for cleaning and dusting plus microfibre non-woven cloths.

“A microfibre is simply a very thin, synthetic fibre that is 100 times finer than a human hair,” said Lagarde. “But only microfibres are treated with a unique splitting process that provides extraordinary cleaning results.”

He concedes that making a cloth-like product is both time-consuming and expensive. “The difficulty lies in testing the different compositions of the fibre since the product has to work while also being easy to handle,” he said. “For example a 100 per cent microfibre mop would only be suitable for dry dusting since if it were used for damp cleaning it would be too heavy to move across the floor.”

Most Greenspeed microfibres are made from 70 per cent polyester and 30 per cent polyamide. According to Lagarde it is the testing process – plus the fact that each product is fit for purpose - that makes man-made products superior to their textile counterparts. Other qualities that make them more effective include an exceptionally long life even with frequent washing, and the ability to clean using a minimal amount of water and cleaning agents, he says.

Attached to textiles?

“People in the cleaning sector tend to require soft, high quality cloths that are easy to handle and that give good results,” says Lagarde. “And every application needs a product with a different composition to provide a perfect cleaning result. We don’t manufacture products and then try to find out where they might be useful: we develop products that solve a problem.”

So will end-users remain sentimentally attached to the notion of a textile product going forward? Or will they embrace man-made alternatives?

Vileda’s Dr Jochen Wirsching believes customers are increasingly switching on to products that perform better than textiles. “Performance, hygiene results and productivity are the factors that count most in the cleaning sector,” he said. “Customers also want cloths that can be laundered successfully and that effectively release chemicals on to the wiping surface rather than retain them within the cloth. These factors – as well as practical benefits such as foldability and stackability – all count for more than having a ‘natural-looking’ product.”

And SCA’s Lars Fingal also predicts that functionality will win out at the end of the day. “The time it takes to perform a task is becoming more of an issue than whether or not the cleaning or wiping product used to execute it has textile-like properties,” he said.

“As a result we are already seeing a trend in some companies towards putting efficiency and hygiene first. But for now we will continue to try to simulate nature with our products – though in a more efficient way.”