Pernicious Paper Towels: Refuse, Reduce, Don’t Use!!

In the midst of the busy humdrum of our everyday lives, it is alarmingly easy to be unconsciously wasteful. In a culture shaped by the tenets of convenience, and the inherent disposability that comes with such convenience, waste has become normalized, expected, and overlooked. As evidenced by this blog and the sources of waste identified in previous posts, many sources of waste in our daily lives can and should be avoided and replaced with more sustainable alternatives. Today’s topic is no exception: paper towels.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I abhor the use of paper towels. Whether they are being used for drying one’s hands in a public restroom, cleaning up spills, or wiping down surfaces, there is simply no need for them to exist.

As with other sources of unnecessary waste and resource consumption in our lives, paper towel usage comes with some serious environmental ramifications:
-According to Better Planet Paper, in the US alone, 13 billion pounds (6,500,000 TONS!!) of paper towels are used each year.
-To make just one ton of paper towels requires 17 trees and 20,000 gallons of water.
-Additionally, it would require 51,000 trees per day to replace the number of paper towels that are thrown away each day.
And that, is the very essence of the issue here: our acclimatization to, comfort with, and acceptance of our throwaway culture.


Instead of using, wasting, and throwing away countless paper towels, you can progress down the path toward greener living by deciding to do without these wasteful, single-use products.
This can be done by:

1. Simply don’t use them! If you are in a public restroom, choose to use hand dryers or let your hands air dry instead.

2. At home, invest in reusable dishcloths (or repurpose old textiles, such as old t-shirts, into rags). Because dishcloths have a much longer lifespan than single-use paper towels, the impact of their production is much less per use. Additionally, washing your dishcloths using green laundry techniques can further reduce the impact per use. Learn more about the greener and greenest dishcloth options by checking out Green Lifestyle Magazine’s post on the topic.

3. If you do continue to use paper towels (at home or while on the go), be sure to use sparingly. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have looked on in absolute horror as people carelessly pull five or six paper towels from the dispenser and use only a fraction of them to dry their hands before placing the largely unused stack into the trash!!

4. Again, if you continue to use paper towels, be sure to purchase recycled paper products rather than products produced from virgin wood pulp. According to Dr. Greene’s 13 Facts About Home Paper Products, if every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber paper towels (70 sheets) with 100 percent recycled ones, we could save 544,000 trees.

5. Although paper towels should not be recycled as oils and other residues can contaminate the recycling stream, used paper towels can and should be composted as long as there are no harmful chemicals on the paper towels after use. Don’t have a compost? Learn how to start one by checking out my previous post on household composting!! 

6. Engage in some guerrilla-style environmentalism by investing in “These Come from Trees” stickers to place on paper towel dispensers. Each sticker deployed saves about 100 pounds (a tree’s worth of paper) every year by raising our levels of consciousness regarding paper towel waste. I ordered a 50-sticker pack for $10 and am eagerly awaiting their arrival...

Overall, the aim of this week’s post, and of this blog in general, is not to shame anyone for their current choices or practices, but to instead raise awareness as to the environmental ramifications of said practices and offer more sustainable, greener alternatives. So, this week I urge you to commit to a paper towel free life. The first steps may be as simple as buying a reusable dishcloth or letting your hands air dry the next time you are in a public restroom. As always, please let me know how it goes and feel free to share any thoughts, considerations, or concerns in the comments section below. In the meantime, best of luck on your journey toward greener living.

~Sam