Dish Sponge

This object, now part of our everyday life, is composed of two separate layers of artificial polymers: the softer layer, which recreates the feel of a natural sponge, is usually made of polyurethane or some other foamed plastic polymers; while the thinner dark green layer, which serves as a scouring pad, is made of harder polyethylene mesh. The first type of these bi-functional dish sponges was patented by 3M as a car cleaning sponge, or bug sponge: the hard layer of the sponge was designed to remove those notoriously-difficult-to-remove-insects that get stuck to your car’s exterior.

Natural sponges, which have been used for thousands of years as cleaning, padding and decoarting tools, are the soft fibrous skeletons of sea creatures of the phylum Porifera which means ‘pore bearer’. However, by the 1950’s these had been overfished so heavily that the industry almost collapsed, and most sponge-like materials are now synthetic, made from either cellulose or plastic.