20 Let’s Talk Trash! MARCH/APRIL 2018
©2018 The Keenan Group, Inc
paper towels least green way of drying hands, study finds: Do you use paper towels at home or even at your workplace? Those paper towels you’re using regularly can actually cause massive damage to you and our environment. According to a study, paper towels are one of the least green ways and environmental way of drying your hands. The Environmental Impact of Paper Towels consider this: To make one ton of paper towels, we have to destroy 17 trees and pollute 20,000 gallons of water, which equates to enough clean water for 40,000 people. Paper towels might be the perfect metaphor for the wasteful, throw-away society America became in the 20th century. The harm done to the environment during their manufacture, and the amount of waste they produce, are scandals that are largely unrecognized by those who use them. Paper towels were invented by the Scott Paper Company in 1907. Details are sketchy, but it appears they may have been created as an expedient reuse of a rail car full of another paper product that didn’t meet specifications. Individual paper towels didn’t go into regular mass production until 1922, and it was 1931 before rolls of paper towels were introduced for kitchen use. Fast forward to the 21st century, and papers towels have become a daily fact of life for most Americans. More than 13 billion pounds of paper towels are used each year in the USA, amounting to 40 pounds – the equivalent of 80 rolls – per person, per year. (That’s one roll every four and a half days for every man, woman and child.) After a single use, paper towels go into landfills – some 3,000 tons annually – where it generates methane gas as it decomposes. Like carbon dioxide, methane gas is a greenhouse gas that’s strongly implicated as a cause of climate change. The convenience of paper towels comes with a heavy price far above what you pay in the store.
Paper towels are terribly difficult to recycle and in spite of paper being touted as biodegradable, paper often doesn’t even break down in the landfill.
Warm air hand dryers and paper towels were found to generate 70% more carbon emissions than the newest technology
To help solve this problem, using environmentally friendly towels can be the perfect solution.
https://inhabitat.com/inhabitots/why-your-family-should-quit-using-paper-towels-immediately
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