Earth Girls Are Easy: Paper Towel Challenge

I only use one roll every couple of months... but I'm single... and I don't like to use paper towels.

I prefer to use sponges for clean-ups and for "messes", I use ordinary towels and wash them.

I even use linen napkins instead of paper ones... and wash them.

This may be one of the biggest areas that I'm a green person on... because I like trees.. I like them a lot... ;o)

Never heard of sham wow. lol

I use dish towels. Regular dish towels to wipe off counter tops and such. I wash the dishtowels and reuse. Easy.

'I don’t like trees. I don’t like outside. I don’t like leaving the house.'

Woulda fell off my chair laughing if my fat butt wasn't wedged in it!!

I use about one roll every 3-4 days I think. I use sandwich bags for my fella's lunch sandwiches and as he has oozy cheese spread I wrap them up in paper towels before putting them in the bag. I also use paper towels for cleaning my kitchen worktops, with anti-bacterial spray. I'm a bit germ-phobic and tend to avoid using cloths, but I have a perfectly good washing machine so I may try cutting up some rags myself and using them.

OMG, I posted before reading your comments, and I SO DID NOT just copy off Cat! I swear!!! Holy "the BOMB" crap! Wow.

Cat, you must be my long lost twin sister for us to be on the same mind meld here. Whoaaaaaa...

Okay - off to read the rest of the comments.

I haven't bought paper towels in years.
Not cause I want to save the planet, but because I'm too cheap.
They are a waste! I bought a 4 pack of microfiber clothes from Dollar General for less than $3. These clothes are pretty big, so what I did was I cut 2 of them into quarters. Perfect sizes for cleaning up counter tops, tabletops, and basically everything else. We even use them when hand washing our dishes.

I left 2 full sized cloths intact for larger uses such as spills and mopping the floor. Yep, mopping the floor! Instead of buying the refills for my swiffer sweeper, I tuck in a microfiber cloth that I've dipped in soapy water and rung out.

Microfiber is the BOMB. Great investment.

Toss 'em in the washer when they get nasty, just don't forget NOT to use fabric softener or dryer sheets when you wash & dry them - if you use them to clean windows & mirrors the fabric softener will make them leave behind streaks. Boo!

We have paper towels and they last a long time. We mainly use them for cooking, e.g., bacon in micro, etc. I also use napkins. We use a “lot” of dish towels. And we use old baby cloth diapers/bibs as rags for wiping spills, polishing granite countertops, etc.

One pet peeve: If you are at work. Ask your person who buys the white paper towels for the dispensers to switch to the brown towels. Use unbleached and/or chlorine free paper products [copy paper, paper towels, coffee filters, etc.]. This might be your property manager who does this in the common area restrooms. One co-worker wears a towel on his pants (I know…hey, it works for some).

Another thing is paper plates. At work, we bought dishes and utensils. Every little bit helps. It’s hard to adjust sometimes. Use less paper products when you can.

You don't have to be insulting. You don't have to call her names. If you can't make your point without doing so, don't comment at all. I'm deleting all comments like that.

This is sophistry made into art. Anyone who thinks reducing paper towel use is somehow saving the planet is a moron who understands absolutely nothing about the paper industry. People who engage in this kind of nonsense are laboring under the delusion that paper pulp companies like International are logging old growth forest, which is utterly false.

The pulp companies now own and maintain their very own private forests where they grow pines whose sole purpose is to be harvested for pulp. When the trees are harvested, they are immediately replanted and left alone to reach maturity, at which point the cycle begins anew. Drive through east Texas, for instance, and you will find plots of pines in various stages of maturity, plus active planting sites where trees have recently been harvested.

Additionally, paper towels typically contain a large amount of post consumer recycled content, so the argument can definitely be made that by reducing command for that particular commodity, you are actually HARMING the environment. When the commodity price on paper scrap drops, large paper consumers like commercial printing facilities have less of an incentive to sell their scrap to recycling companies.

So go ahead and use less paper towels if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but please do not delude yourself into believing you are somehow saving the planet.

How does your Mum not have internet access if she is living at your house?

One paper towel roll in our house lasts for months, cos I forget it exists... we always used chux wipes as kids and wash them... so thats what I use now.

Sorry Ma Earth, versatility wins with me. Paper Towels are akin to duct tape for me. I'll just pitch in elsewhere.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about how many paper towels and paper plates we use. I told her I was feeling bad that we were killing trees because I was too lazy to do dishes more often. Then I told her, but if I do more dishes then I am just wasting more water, so which is worse? I loved her answer, they are both renewable resources and making the products gives people jobs, so I shouldn't worry about it either way. I'm lazy, so this rationale works great for me. :)

that's funny, I never have paper towels in my home. Ever. Once I had a roommate who liked to use them, I guess because her family had money to throw away when she was growing up, but mine never did.

In my house now I just have no use for them. We have a nice big stack of dish towels on hand at all times. As long as nothing besides water gets on the dish towels they do not need to be washed (within reason). To wipe up spills we use one of the cloths or sponges that are always sitting on the sink. Windows are cleaned with a sponge or cloth and soapy water, then wiped down with a clean, dry dish towel (no streaking, ever). There is no cleaning job in my home that cannot be performed with a sponge, cloth, scourer, vaccum cleaner or scrubber.

Using paper towels does not even occur to me.

I use bar mops. You can get them at BB&Beyond, or any restaurant supply shop, and probably online. They are thick towels that bartenders use to mop up spills. I learned to use them when I worked in a private club. Use them like towels when cooking or baking and whenever something spills just mop it up. They're bleachable, and even if they stain (grape juice) who cares? They used to come 6 to a pack for about 6-10 bucks, but I haven't bought any in a few years. They make another kind that are thin, but they are more for drying glasses lint free. You want to get the white terry kind. I'd be lost without them.

I already failed at this
http://mainepets.mainetoday.com/blogentry.html?id=...
impossible with pets and kids

I'm pretty lazy about buying paper towels, so we'll go a month or two without them, and then when we get them, we waste the crap out of them. But I like to think I counteract that with the months in between when I don't buy any.

I use the kids old t-shirts that they grow out of (and they grow out of them fast). For nose-blowing and such, I use toilet paper and (i forget where i read this) I have started throwing my snot rags in the bathroom trash instead of flushing them because I read that that extra flush uses x amount of water, and if everyone would try to flush less and throw snot rags in the trash instead of toilet, they would save so much water, etc.

I have bought about 6 reusable shopping bags, but have forgotten to take them with me when I go shopping. So I end up buying more when I'm out.

But we are big time users of plastic shopping bags because we have dogs. I don't know how to get us out of this, as it is the best thing we can use. I hate that we even use plastic shopping bags, but dear lord, picking up dog poop with anything else sucks!

Sophie, you need to be writing a book!

My mom always had old socks under the sink to use for dusting and cleaning. It was nice because you could stick your hand in the foothole and use it like a glove.

We don't use paper towels. Me, my husband, and my sister-in-law all live here and we decided to go green when our electric bill got ridiculous. We've brought it down $70! We use the energy saving lightbulbs, and unplug everything except the tv and its devices, and our computers. Another thing I stopped doing was buying those plug-in air fresheners. I used to be obsessed with them, and had one in every room. Turns out, each one was raising my bill about $8. Im the worst one about paper towels though, and mostly I don't use them because we really cant afford them. When I did buy them, I bought the 3 pack of the Viva ones, my Kleenex. They're so thick that you can use less and they last a long time. Right now we just use dish towels(I got so many at my wedding shower, I ended up giving several away) and sponges.

Do I get a prize if we already do this?
*stands up and does a I-am-an-enviromental-supah-stah-armpit sniff*
Booyah!
Really, we're just too poor to use paper towels.
No, but really-really, we try to be environmentally kind and it usually translates into saving money.

P.S. What do you use to soak up the grease in food?

Wow Sophie, this one is going to be very hard for me. I use paper towels for EVERYTHING. I use two just to eat with (one in the lap and one on the side), little spills always get more paper towel than necessary, and we keep them in the bathroom for after washing our hands. I know.... bad.

We did just recently get a Sham Wow, the thing is freaking awesome! Oh and I just bought a Swiffer duster thingy-ma-gig and use that to dust now instead of Windex-ing the living daylights out of everything.

In my house (me, my sister, and her son) we probably go through less than one roll a week. PLATES FTW!

I made this a personal challenge about a year ago.

I went to the automotive department at Wal-Mart and bought two 24 packs of microfiber shop rags. They were like 5 bucks a pack. (If you buy microfiber rags in the cleaning aisle they are 10 times more expensive.)

Microfiber rags are the BOMB. You can clean up a LOT with one rag, and generally I don't have to use any chemicals because they are so good at scrubbing. PLUS they are washable. (Just don't use fabric softener because it reduces the absorbency of the rag.) I use about 10 rags a day doing various tasks around the house but I probably go through only one roll of paper towels over the course of two weeks, and that's with a family of 5.(Before starting this challenge we were going through at least a roll a day.)

By reducing your reliance on paper towels you are not only saving the environment, but also saving a LOT of money. I used to use the expensive Viva paper towels. At about two bucks a roll, and going through 7 rolls a week that's 14 bucks a week. That's a whopping 700 bucks a year on paper towels!!(that may be a slight exaggeration but you get my point.)

My kids use the most paper towels out of anyone in the house although they are getting better. The only thing I use them at all for anymore is cleaning up cat vomit. With 4 cats it happens around here, and I ain't cleaning up cat throw up with my rags and then washing them. I draw the line right there.

The only thing left for me to work on green wise is going off the grid. When we build our house we are planning on installing a full solar power system so that will take care of that.

Great Post!!