The actual Swiffer is fully made of plastic. The container that the Swiffer cleaning pads come on is made from plastics along with the lid that covers it. Plastic is non biodegradable, meaning it will break into smaller pieces as time goes on but will never fully break down. The actual pads are chemically soaked and then thrown away and taken to soak into the ground in a landfill. Even the Swiffer that projects the chemical cleaner requires the pads, which are thrown away when finished. These things pile up in landfills and take years to break down, of they do at all.
Gianfranco Zaccai, the maker of Swiffer, stated “Cleaning the floor with an old-fashioned mop and detergent is a messy and unpleasant job that uses many gallons of hot water and great amounts of detergent every week in millions of homes around the world. The water, the energy needed to heat that water, and the environmental impact of dumping the detergent into the waste stream are terribly costly, and all for a job no one likes doing anyway.” He is right when he says the old fashioned mop and detergent uses gallons of water. Dumping the detergent afterwards is bad for the environment, but it isn’t any worse then his chemically made Swiffer Wet Jet projector.
Swiffer was smart in choosing the colors to help support them. Green makes the consumer feel as if the product is truly a “green” product. Humans associate the color green with Eco-Friendly objects. So when they see the green Swiffer and packaging, it gives false accusations that the product is environmental friendly. Purple is usually calming and soothing which helps the consumer believe that they are doing good and making the right choice in buying the right cleanser.
Haley Wright
Communicating Health, Science and the Environment 
Swiffer is so laughably un-green. I want to give most americans the benefit of the doubt that they understand that petroleum based products are terrible for the environment, but we really do sacrifice a lot of the environment for the sake of saving a little time.
The mop and bucket may use more water and need more time for drying afterwards, but the swiffer is so much worse since it is just plastic and when you are done with the pads you have to go back to swiffer to buy more of those pads or else the swiffer will be useless. While a mop will not need new heads very often and the cleaning products bought to be used on the floor could be green.
-FinnDonovan
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They are not environmental friendly at all. My family used to have the one with wipes. We went through the floor wipes like crazy and those aren’t echo friendly. The wipes that we had didn’t go through the washing machine. They were just sanitizer wipes that you threw a way and got a new one each time.
Abigail Cain
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Please make a genuine swifter product that quickly decomposes safely in our landfills or our earth is doomed with all the chemicals, plastic bags or anything that’s destroying our earth. Think about our children, grandchildren!!!!
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Interesting point about them choosing the color green for their product in a likely attempt to “subliminally message” (if you will) consumers into thinking that they are making a wiser choice. I also found that to be true in the ad I analyzed. I would say that Zaccai is committing the Fibbing greenwashing sin because Swiffer is not environmentally friendly at all and he has no evidence to support his claim.
Kris Kowalk
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It’s clearly obvious that they arent green if a person actually sits and thinks about it, how could it be!? But that just goes to show the power of advertisement on people.
Eli Farmer
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Thanks for this, very interesting.
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