Swiffer or kW?

Caterina Polese
Living with 4kW per day in 2023
1 min readOct 26, 2023

After reducing the consumption of the fridge and deciding not to give up the lights, I decided to cut back on cleaning. Before the challenge I was washing clothes once, at most twice a week in the washing machine and vacuuming once a week. For the challenge I decided to reduce this consumption: washing machine every fortnight, so that I have enough clothes to fill it, and no more vacuuming. This last point was suggested to me by my roommate. She, in particular, always uses the Swiffer to collect the hair that is often left on the floor, so she suggested this method for cleaning the room. Initially, I was a bit against it, because I imagined that the final cleaning result would be less effective, but I then decided to try this solution. In fact, with this alternative I have been able to save about 2 kW in total over these two weeks. However, the question I now have is: is saving 2 kW, but throwing away a Swiffer cloth after each use, a sustainable choice?

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