In January 2024, I decided to stop using paper towels as a small experiment to reduce landfill waste and replaced them with Smart Towels. Paper towels biodegrade, but we dispose of them in plastic bags that do not biodegrade. Rather, plastic breaks down into microplastics and is in everything and everywhere!
Smart Towels are 10″x 10″ squares upcycled from old t-shirts. And this is the 1st anniversary of using Smart Towels exclusively, except for those nasty situations.
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 that ripple outward to families and communities.
- Living an eco-conscious and sustainable lifestyle.
The Background Story of Smart Towels – read here
My 2-person household averages 3 rolls of Bounty paper towels per week.
–3 rolls of paper towels, $2.50 per roll /week x 4 weeks = 12 rolls per month, $30 per month
–12 rolls of paper towels/month x 12 months = 144 rolls per year, $360 per year
–144 rolls of paper towels/year x 5 years = 720 rolls per 5 years, $1,800 per 5 years
That’s a lot of paper towels thrown in the trash and eventually ending up in landfills! A huge plus is the money you saved to do as you wish.💲💲💲
Smart Towels: 1st Anniversary Review
1. My household will continue to use Smart Towels instead of paper towels, knowing we are helping the environment, living an eco-conscious and sustainable life, and saving money.
2. Thinking of the added landfill pollution from paper towels to the environment was the impetus to change the way I thought about paper towels, which changed my behavior and those in my household.
3. The endless loop paper towel companies create, and the idea that we cannot live without paper towels is smashed because we can.
4. Reusable Smart Towels is a quiet rebellion against a throwaway culture, and a reminder that positive individual actions impact the world we live in.
How many paper towels does your household use per week?
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