Why do we need artificial cleaners?

I've just had a blindingly obvious revelation, we only have artificial cleaners to clean up artificial messes.

I work on a ship in the IT department. To stop our equipment falling and breaking when we sail, we use some incredibly sticky double sided gel tape. This works brilliantly until you want to remove the stuff. To scrape it off, I grabbed a credit card and some quite effective petroleum based cleaner that left my hands feeling pretty horrible. And then I had this revelation.

Last month I read Raven Ranson's Cleaners you can eat, I've also been pooless for several years. Both of these have shown me that natural messes can be cleaned with far more natural products (mostly hot water!).

So all this leads to the really obvious conclusion, if I want to use natural cleaners, I need to first remove the mess creators that require the artificial cleaners.

I do have a question though. What can I use to replace the credit card scraper? It's flexible, has an edge harder than most sticky things, softer than most surfaces and so doesn't damage the finish.

Incidentally, I'm recommending that the ship changes over to monitor mount arms that clamp on the desk. No stupid tape and better ergos for users.

Reach for the cooking oil to remove that sticky stuff.

I don't know about the credit card but that might help scrap it all off.

Is there no special equipment to replace that sticky tape?

Hi Anne, this came about as I was removing the tape to install the monitors on an arm bolted to the desk. It's possible to not use the tape, the cheapest and probably most permie thing to do would be to screw or bolt the existing monitor stand to the desk but that isn't great for the users. Replacing the built in stand with the arm clamped to the desk is much better for the user (much more adjustable, frees up desk space) but there's a lot more material and waste involved.