TL;DR Cut up your old t-shirts and use them instead of buying and throwing away paper towels each week.
Let’s look at another everyday way to reduce your environmental impact. Paper Towels. These things are convenient, they’re a crutch for young parents and a must for most pet owners, but beyond that, I’m here to tell you that they are a thing of the past.
Stats are usually a good way to communicate the impacts of paper towel use, but I don’t find them very effective. Tell me a big number and I’ll raise my eyebrows, maybe give you a half-hearted “wow”, but it won’t keep me up at night, regardless of the magnitude. Instead of quoting great factual articles filled with statistics, I’ll tell you the way to avoid paper towels without sacrificing convenience.
Cut up your unused T-shirts.
I am a big fan of t-shirts. I love them until they develop holes and fray at the neckline. In my blunder years I had a World Industries Flame Boy Tee that was more holes than fabric by freshman year. My Mom led a successful campaign to ultimately throw the holey rag away. Nowadays my better half gives me healthy direction not to wear these shirts in public. After a while, there’s a pile-up. You can only really wear so many shirts until your drawers overflow and you have to make the heartbreaking decision of parting with your beloved tee or your spouse will donate/toss it when you’re not home.
The Flame Boy Tee before it’s chronic use wore holes. Circa 6th grade birthday dance party.
Surreptitious disposal and Goodwill are great programs for growing up but there’s another option that can give your favorite shirt a second life. Cut up the old shirt into squares with a sharp pair of scissors. After a thorough washing, you have rags that will get daily use.
Our system is to have two small boxes under our sink, one has clean rags, one has dirty rags. About once per month we wash the rags on warm and voila: a box of freshies awaits the next cleaning session.
The only exception I can think of is bacon. To dry the grease off bacon you need a paper towel, a good alternative is using a metal drying rack which incidentally lets you bake your bacon in the oven. A superior way to cook the magical meat, as endorsed by Antony Bourdain himself.
So give it a try, you could save money and save the trips to take out the trash that paper towels are so guilty of filling. Worst case scenario is you free up your drawer for a little breathing room and go back to paper towels.