planet over paper
Filed Under Going Green, Multi-tasking, Stuff | June 21, 2010
You reuse your shopping bags, have your kids draw on both sides of pieces of paper and are religious about composting. But what about paper towels? No, we’re not recommending you hang your wet paper towels to dry but have you ever though to switching from paper towels to People Towels?
We’re always on the lookout for little things we can incorporate into our daily routine to minimize our footprint and this summer our goal is to carry People Towels with us whenever we’re out and about – whether we’re just heading to the community centre or hitting the road. In fact they’re one of our new summer must haves.
People Towels are quick-drying, reusable hand towels made from absorbent, organic, fair trade cotton and silk screened with sustainably-inspired designs using eco-friendly dyes. When you think that the average person uses between two and three thousand paper towels a year, decomposing paper towels produce methane gas and hand dryers have their own environmental burden – aside from very seldom actually drying your hands – it makes sense to BYOT.
We were a bit leery about toting around damp towels – they’re actually more the size of a washcloth so very portable – and having them get grungy and germ-laden, but they are quick-drying, as promised, and we just wash them with our regular laundry every few days. Plus each time we use ours we leave the public facilities with a little green glow.
And like many of our favourite products they’re excellent multi-taskers. Not only could your little ones take them to daycare or preschool for their daily ablutions but they also make handy napkins in picnic lunches – if they’re clean of course – and you can use them as backup if you’re far from home and short on wipes and need to clean little hands, faces (or even bottoms) on the go.
Our main challenge is getting into a good habit groove and remembering to channel all our reusable intentions and actually bring our People Towels with us when we head out the door.
People Towels*: www.peopletowels.com
*Please note: these are not widely available in Canada (yet!) so if you want ‘em it’s easiest to order them directly from www.peopletowels.com. We have tested their shipping and we received ours without issue (or crazy duties).
Like these? Here are some other reusable products we love:
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Let us know what you think or share your great finds with us so we can share them with other Vancouver mothers!
Thanks for the great article on PeopleTowels and helping us spread the BYOT message! We’re in the The Beat Waste Startup Challenge, please vote for us – http://www.myoocreate.com/challenges/the-plastiki-beat-waste-startup-challenge/entries/306