a color story: the sponge

The dishes needed to be washed. I scraped the food of the plates to the compost bin. I used the green side of the sponge to get rid of tough spots. I flipped the sponge over and applied the softer, yellow side for pots and pans. I understood from writing the SpongeBob article that the kitchen sponges we used today were based off yellow natural sea sponges. But, there was another side to the kitchen sponge.

Why was the kitchen sponge abrasive side green? 

I needed more context. 

In 1937, German Scientist Otto Bayer accidentally invented the artificial sponge (polyurethane form) by noticing the defected polyurethane uncanny resemblance with sea sponges. Before the common use of kitchen sponges, people washed their dishes with rags and probably sea sponges.  

Then, 

3M patented a double sided with two different layers; they added another layer, the thicker layer which contained polyethylene mesh. The sponge as we know it was first used for cars. The tougher, abrasive side was used to get rid of insects off cars.  

Still, why green?

I dug deeper and a Quora user suggested that the natural sea sponges mainly came in yellow but had hues of green, too. So, when people made the switch from natural to synthetic, the transition would feel trustworthy and familiar. 

The green represented algae and it made sense since the two living organisms had a symbiotic relationship. I questioned whether the algae could have abrasive properties since I remembered it being slimy. I wondered if dried algae had an abrasive texture. This theoretical explanation explained the color choices for the green side of the kitchen sponge. 

The Quora answer seemed like a far stretch. I googled images of "natural sea sponge". When the sponge dried, yellow was beige and green (algae) was brown. Using yellow as an homage to its predecessor (natural sea sponge) seemed odd. 

Or, the color choices were for aesthetics. Green and yellow do look good together. You can find the pleasant color combination in daffodils, in fall trees, and even lemon lime. There were other color options for artificial sponges. I noticed blue cellulose sponges made with wood pulp on my google searches. 

Then... Why didn't I catch this earlier...

Washing dishes wasn't an attractive chore.  The dirtiest aspect wasn't dealing with the dirty plates; it was dealing with the medium that touches all the dirty plates. The sponge. It was full of bacteria. It was dirty. And it smelled. 

We don't usually accustom the negative traits of a used kitchen sponge with yellow and green. The colors were attractive, unlike the sponge. 

I guess the sponge was sugar coated with color. 

I saw the dish pile and the sponge wasn't hard to find. It was yellow.  Although I knew it was filled with bacteria, I barely thought about that. I grabbed it and started to wash the dishes one by one.