When Michele and I buy paper towels, what we get depends on where we are. If we are at Whole Foods, we will get some something like Seventh Generation which advertise that they are 100% recycled paper and 100% unbleached. If we are at Safeway, we will get something like Bounty which just touts their soaking up power.
But, when we get home, both choices seem wrong. The Bounty and their ilk are made from virgin forests and bleach, so we are wrong there. But the perforations allow us to use half sheets so we use alot less. The Seventh Generation paper towels are perforated so we can only use full sheets (unless somebody wanted to use scissors to cut the sheets). So they may be made in a way that has less impact, but using them uses almost double the paper.
Nothing like getting chastised in public for buying the wrong paper towels. I never, ever buy the virgin forest paper towels. What we have now are Trader Joes paper towels, and true, they don’t have the half-towel perforations, but they are made from recycled paper. I didn’t want to use the gas to drive to Whole Foods just for paper towels. And Seventh Generation, or one of those, does have half towel perforations, I just picked up the wrong roll last time. Sorry.
There is a brilliant paper towel product out there that lets you use 1/3 of a sheet at a time. Maybe its Bounty, maybe its Brawny, maybe both have it. You are still probably using virgin forest and bleach, but at least you can better moderate your destruction of the world.
Target used to carry those towels and I always got them there. Then they stopped carrying them. What, did P&G notice that when they gave consumers more control, their towel sales dropped?
Hummm. I didn’t mean to chastise anybody except the towel companies.
Even better than disposable paper towels are reusable terry towels. Or, as my mother would remind me, rags from old t-shirts and bath towels.