Disposable paper towels have become a huge part of American culture. We use them for drying our hands, cleaning up spills, cleaning our windows and counters, and wiping up food with our meals. Paper towels cannot be recycled. This means that the 3000+ tons of paper towel waste used each day in the U.S. is ultimately ending up in landfills. As they decompose, paper towels release methane gas, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than CO2, into our atmosphere. This is not the only unsustainable problem in the life cycle of paper towels. To produce just 1 ton of paper towels, 17 trees must be cut down and 20,000 gallons of water must be used. This does not even take into account the amount of CO2 that is released into the atmosphere when transporting them to the places in which they are sold and used. Paper towels are an unsustainable trend in today’s culture that should be abandoned for other, greener options.
While paper towels may seem like the sanitary and convenient option in many cases, this is not true for the health of our earth. Sponges and reusable towels are a much greener cleaning alternative that can be washed when they are dirty. Old newspapers can be used for cleaning windows, which will leave fewer streaks, giving us cleaner glass while also providing a use for newspapers that we no longer need. Paper towels are most frequently used for drying hands, but reusable cloth towels are a much better option for this. They can be washed every now and then, but shouldn’t get very dirty if we are washing our hands properly. We use reusable towels after we shower, so why not after we clean our hands? Air dryers in public bathrooms are not a much better alternative. They require great amounts of energy in use as well as production. We can all be a little more sustainable if we do our part to cut paper towels out of our waste entirely. This is something I have begun since I have been living in the Solheimar community, and it has been surprisingly easy. If we don’t have disposable paper towels at our disposal, we will find other alternatives that are just as effective without ending up in our landfills.
To read more about the paper towel problem and solutions, visit: http://www.carbonrally.com/challenges/36-paper-towels-environment
Taylor Mulliniks