Use a Roomba—It's Greener than a Vacuum Cleaner

Don't you just love It when the laziest option turns out to be the greenest one, too? I do. In a recent matchup in TreeHugger's This Vs That series, the Roomba was deemed greener than an upright vacuum cleaner.

How can that be, you ask? It's mainly due to two factors: energy efficiency, and the amount of materials needed to manufacture the product. Roomba has the edge in both. The Roomba wins out the latter easily?it's a tiny device that uses fewer plastics than any conventional vacuum cleaner. As for energy efficiency, check the stats on the Roomba vs. Upright post for details on how the battery operated device beats out the outlet sucker.

And while I'm on batteries, I should note that an important part of the greener Roomba scenario is that all batteries are properly recycled?which should happen only once a year, and shouldn't be much of a hassle. Just ring up the Call 2 Recycle guys and get rid of them the green way.

Oh yeah, one final thing I should have mentioned earlier: buying and operating the Roomba is much cheaper too. Of course, you'll probably need to have access to a stronger vacuum to clean up the nastier messes?Roomba's capabilities only take it so far, after all?but hey, that's what neighbors are for.