My mother always kept her home and yard immaculate. That included her driveway, of course, so when my car leaked oil on her beautiful driveway I did everything I could to get the stains off. I used kitty litter and special detergents. I scrubbed and scrubbed. It finally looked better, but I could never get it completely clean.
Since I couldn’t park on the street, I took my car into the repair shop and asked them to fix the leak. For some reason it continued to make little drip marks. I put a white rug with a plastic tarp underneath it hoping it wouldn’t be too noticeable. I never was able to get the stains on my mother’s driveway all the way out. It was embarrassing.
Now we have products that are amazingly effective. Maybe you have heard of a commercial concrete cleaner that seems too good to be true. It is, however, pretty mind boggling! It uses microbes that do the cleaning. It is environmentally safe and not harmful to pets. No scrubbing and no water is required. You just work the product in with a broom, spread it evenly on the soiled area and let it sit for a while. Because it has no shelf life, you can sweep up the left-over stuff and use it again.
It is effective on any surface such as trash cans, dumpsters, concrete, of course, and even dirt itself. It works into the pores of the surfaces and pretty much eats up the oil or gunk! It is natural, cost effective and simple to use.
The microbes in another type of product are engineered to quickly multiply by using oxygen. This product will absorb five times its own weight in liquid and when it is not completely saturated you can reuse it. It reduces vapors and odors. It can also be used around plants, animals and humans without any harm.
It is so much easier to battle spills and stains with this bioremediation process. It surely does beat scrubbing with toxic chemical cleaners that cannot effectively remove the entire stain. It is astonishing to witness the way those special little microbes eat away all the oil, etc.
Microbes are most definitely changing the way people clean. The latest formulations of these products are much improved and designed to make cleaning more affordable and less labor intensive. Consumers want their products to work and they are especially concerned these days about whether the substances are harmful to our environment. If the product does get down drains or gutters, it will just clean as it goes along with no danger of toxicity.
It is comforting to know that because it is a dry product our water is also conserved. You apply it on the stained surface, walk away and let it sit and do its work. The product works its way down into the pores of the surface, breaks up the stain and turns it into CO2. Then it just evaporates. What a relief it is to finally have an easy way to clean up ugly concrete stains!