Mop socket with eco-credentials

Robert Scott has become the first company in the UK cleaning sector to incorporate a biodegradable plastic additive into its mop socket design.

This innovation means that Exel sockets are designed to biodegrade in managed landfill environments, eliminating the environmental impact of traditional plastic components polluting the planet for hundreds of years.

As Europe’s largest mop manufacturer, Robert Scott has long led the way in sustainable design, first re-using waste fabric back in the 1940’s to manufacture mopheads. Today, Robert Scott manufactures 25 million mops a year in the UK. Of these, the cotton-rich fibre is recycled from 100 per cent post-consumer waste, while the Big White fabric is re-using industrial waste.

A recent redesign to the socket is now saving 137 tonnes of plastic each year. In addition, the socket is made from durable polypropylene (PP); a type of plastic which can be recycled continuously into new products.

However, Robert Scott understands some products that can be recycled aren’t always recycled, especially considering regional discrepancies in recycling methods and complexities of waste streams. They’re now adding an innovative additive called BioSphere to Exelsockets, which speeds up the biodegradation process in managed landfill conditions. Plastics treated with the additive still have unlimited shelf life and are non-toxic.

Alastair Scott, sales director at Robert Scott, says: “We scrutinise every component of our products and every aspect of our operations to meet our sustainability commitments. While a mop socket on its own may seem relatively insignificant, when you consider the 20 to 30 grams of plastic per unit across the millions of mops sold each year, the environmental impact soon adds up.

 “We know sustainability is a key concern in the commercial cleaning sector, both for our customers and the end-user. By making our sockets both reusable, recyclable and now biodegradable, we’re helping address this by reducing plastic waste in the sector.”

 To biodegrade, the socket is simply added to a managed landfill. The polymer attracts over 600 types of microbes, allowing them to colonise the plastic and begin to break down the polymer chain by utilising its carbon backbone as an energy source.

Put simply, this creates the opportunity for microbes to utilise plastic as food and this process continues until the only remaining element is nutritional, organic soil without the creation of microplastic. Comparing this to normal untreated plastics, which can pollute the planet for anything up to 500 years, it’s an amazing and revolutionary additive.

The Exel push-fit socket was originally designed by Robert Scott to accommodate different designs of mop handles, while preventing the chance of the mop unscrewing when being wrung out. Since its introduction in the 1990’s, this innovation has helped the Robert Scott mop to become the market-leader in the UK’s commercial cleaning sector.