Green Oil EcoSponge

To be frank, there isn't much beyond the usual you would expect a sponge to do. Soak up water from a bucket, be soft and frame friendly, and remove the worst of the grit and grime off your bike. Technically the Green Oil EcoSponge does all of these, but not quite as well as you might hope.

The EcoSponge is claimed to be the world's first Fairtrade bike product, made in the Philippines. It uses a plant-base inner, from indigenous plants. The outer is recycled cotton, mainly from reclaimed cotton rice sacks, and it's all biodegradable, making it compostable at the end of its life.

> Buy this online here

Size-wise, the sponge isn't ideal. Personally, when it comes to cleaning a muddy cyclo-cross bike I'm not hanging around. Having to wash bikes almost daily through the winter means you want the job done well, but quickly. That tends to require a large sponge which can soak up plenty of water and can be manhandled into all the tricky-to-get places of a bike. With the EcoSponge it seemed too small to use hurriedly, and I found myself catching knuckles on sharp chainrings or dropping it entirely. Usually with a larger sponge you at least have some protection from this.

The natural plant fibres do soak up water, making them soft and pliable, but just not enough. The sponge was still too rigid to really work efficiently and the low water absorption meant plenty of trips back to the bucket. Equally, the lack of absorption was an issue when drying the bike with a dry and clean EcoSponge. Having said that, the sponge did foam well when used in conjunction with the Green Oil Green Clean spray I've also been testing.

The outer layer of recycled cotton is certainly a nice addition to the previous model which was simply the plant fibres (see the review here). It is soft so you don't have to worry about scratching any precious carbon as before. It does bring up another issue, though, with the fibres bunching and twisting inside the cotton.

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Naturally, cleaning a dirty bike does discolour the sponge quickly, especially the white cotton outer, so the fact that it is machine washable is a big plus, lengthening the life of your sponge.

At £3.99 it's not wildly expensive, although still more expensive than a car washing sponge from Halfords. But then that isn't Fairtrade or biodegradable, so I guess it comes down to a conscious decision. It does do the job required, just maybe not as well as it could.

Verdict

A clever, environmentally friendly idea, but it doesn't really do the job as well as cheaper and bigger alternatives