Do you know how paper towels are made, and the costs to the planet?
How Paper Towels Are Made
🌳Trees are cut down and harvested for pulpwood, which is turned into paper fibers.
🌳Logs are transported to a pulp mill.
🌳Logs are stripped of bark and fed into chippers, leading to small, uniform pieces for pulping.
🌳Chips are turned into pulp through a chemical process, a.k.a chemical pulping.
🌳The pulp is bleached, typically with bleached with chlorine-based compounds or hydrogen peroxide.
🌳Pulp is pressed and dried into sheets.
🌳Sheets are textured/embossed and rolled.
🌳Rolls are cut, wrapped, and packaged.
🌳Distribution to retail stores for customers to purchase.
🌳Single-use paper towels → disposed of in single-use plastic garbage bags that do not biodegrade and end up in landfills.
And there you have it…
an endless loop of cutting down trees, reducing logs into wood pulp, making the wood pulp into paper towels, packaging them with single use plastics, shipping them to retail stores for people to buy, use them once, throw them away in plastic garbage bags that end up in landfills, and repeats.
Why It Matters
Switching to reusable cloth towels isn’t just about reducing trash. It’s about…
- Protecting forests, which absorb carbon and regulate the climate.
- Cutting emissions & chemicals from manufacturing, bleaching, packaging, and transportation.
- Reducing landfill waste, where decomposing paper releases greenhouse gases. However, when paper towels are thrown away in plastic garbage bags, they don’t decompose and end up producing greenhouse gases.
- Creating sustainable habits, ones that ripple outward to families and communities.
- Living an eco-conscious and sustainable lifestyle.
Reusable Smart Towels is a quiet rebellion against a throwaway culture, and a reminder that individual actions impact the world we live in.
The Background Story of Smart Towels
I loved paper towels! But disposing of them in plastic garbage bags does not decompose. However, when paper towels are thrown away in plastic garbage bags, they can’t decompose and end up producing greenhouse gases. I thought there had to be a better way, and there is. Smart Towels are upcycled from old, unwanted t-shirts. Click here to read my original story of Smart Towels.
During my 2-month experiment of solely using Smart Towels, I learned my household used paper towels for tiny spills, as napkins, cleaning the house and household items, covering bowls when microwaving, and much more. It was an eye-opener to waste and its contribution to the current environmental pollution and climate crisis. Paper towels are biodegradable, but we place used paper towels inside plastic garbage bags which end up in landfills and contribute to greenhouse gases as they (plastics) break down.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it”
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My 2-person household averages 3 rolls of Bounty paper towels per week.
–3 rolls of paper towels/week x 4 weeks = 12 rolls/month
–12 rolls of paper towels/month x 12 months = 144 rolls per year
–144 rolls of paper towels/year x 5 years = 720 rolls/5 years
That’s a lot of paper towels thrown in the trash and eventually end up in landfills!
Here are my 3 takeaways from doing this mini experiment:
1. My household will continue to use Smart Towels instead of paper towels, knowing we am helping our wallet, the environment, and living a eco-conscious and sustainable lifestyle.
2. Although paper towels are no longer purchased, existing ones are tucked away in the closet, only to be used for those nasty cleanups. 3. My household stepped out of the endless loop of using paper towels by switching to Smart Towels.
How many paper towels does your household use per week?
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