This one is about my love to hate relationship with paper towels.
In recent years, paper towel has sneakily captured our lives and become a common sight in almost every household. It is a little less known commodity in the eastern world but an indispensable one in the western world. Paper towels are used for everything from cleaning tables, wiping pans to drying hands in public bathrooms. It is not the worst non-green item but its extravagant use still creates a considerable amount of carbon and water footprint.
Before paper towels came along we were headed in the right direction – rags were the habitual cleaning tool. Trends and extreme convenience of pulling and throwing rather than folding and washing overpowered the old habits.
Rags are reusable and last as long at 1-3 years while paper towels are dumped into trash just after a single use. Used or soiled paper towels cannot be recycled. Though it can composted but composting isn’t best for the environment either(Compost engenders methane, a green house gas which causes climate change).
Not just this, the manufacturing process of paper towels for its profuse use consumes a lot of resources too.
Prior to starting on this journey I did a bit of research online and I was surprised to find that some articles deemed rags to not be a better alternative. But then doing my own math and judgement I was pretty sure that it cannot be true. Those comparisons which said that using rags will consume same amount of water in a wash cycle as paper will consume in productions did not consider nitty- gritty details like a cloth will be used multiple times it will be washed. Or they completely missed to consider carbon-footprint sources of using paper towel like transportation. Paper towel will be bought more frequently, presumably once a month vs a cloth-set might be bought only once a year, thus consuming more energy. One can also argue that the manufacturing of cloth is more resource intensive and thus harmful to the environment. But again if you use a cloth ~15 times it will offset that one time cost.
There will always be some drawback with almost every practice, you cannot have zero footprint, at least not in the current world, probably possible in one of the pill eating futures. I am only trying to look for better alternatives and in my opinion using cloth is a better practice. With using cloth there are many more opportunities to make things even more rosy. You can reuse old t-shirts or simply use the cloth even longer to further make this switch even more rewarding.
My journey goes something like this. In our kitchen, a paper towel was a common sight. We did use a cloth sometimes but when spills looked especially greasy or filthy, we would reach out for paper towel. With time I started finding this habit wasteful. It was displeasing to see the worthless waste getting generated from paper towels. Then it dawned on me that I did not need paper towels. All I needed were some good sets of cleaning cloths.
Versatility of paper towels was definitely hard to replace, but with a variety of cloths we were able to get over that too. I am glad we are mostly off our dependence on paper towel now except for still using them for few cases like packing food etc.
Things that worked for me:
- Keeping enough cloths so that I don’t run out before doing laundry once two weeks.
- Having designated cloths for different purpose. Separate ones for pans and separate ones for cleaning surfaces.
- Using dish towel or cotton cloths for storing herbs in the fridge(it makes them last longer).
- Using old clothes for shoe cleaning.
- Carrying a handkerchief with me and keeping a backup in my bag.
- Keeping extra sets of cloths in the car.
- I got some cloths from amazon durafresh as I needed a few extra ones, these ones are actually sustainable.
I believe there are many other substitutions possible other than the ones mentioned above like using old newspaper or magazines etc. Just put your thinking hats on and get going.
In the end, I would like to call-out this is not a challenge or a competition. It is not about about absolving oneself from paper towel. Do as much as you can in as many steps as you can and finally be as judicious as you can.
Some math facts I used for the calculations:
- Amount of water used in manufacturing cotton cloth = 66 gallon/kg.
- Amount of water used in one kg of paper towel = 10-20 gallon/kg
- Amount of energy used in manufacturing cotton cloth = 40 MWH/tonne
- Amount of energy used in manufacturing paper towel = 2.9 MWH/tonne
Other links:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/11/paper-towels-drying-hands-energy
https://www.thekitchn.com/why-being-paper-towel-free-in-87955