When plastic manufacturing took off in the early 20th century, plastic was heralded as a miraculous material—lightweight, flexible, and sturdy. Eventually, though, plastic’s down sides started to emerge. Now mainstream Americans are aware of the environmental and health issues associated with plastics. Granted, while eco actions of recycling plastic bottles and campaigns to bring your own bottle are taken, there are other equally pressing environmental concerns lurking by the wayside: Paper towels.
Ask yourself, do you subscribe to one or more of the following myths?
•Myth 1: Trees are sustainable so paper towels don’t impact the forests
•Myth 2: Paper towels decompose in landfills
•Myth 3: Most paper towels are made from recycled paper
•Myth 4: Everyone uses paper towels
The truth is, just as mindless as consumers have been regarding the use of plastic bottles, so it is with the use of paper towels. In fact, there are 3,000+ tons of paper towels "thrown away" to landfills every day. It took consumers time and a broader perspective to understand the environmental concerns of plastics. Eco awareness, education and behavior change is needed to address the resource and environmental issues associated with paper towels:
•It takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of virgin fibre for paper towels
•Planting trees is not the same as saving forests
•Paper products represent 31% of the landfill waste in 2008
•50% of paper towels wind up in landfills where they do not easily decompose emitting methane emissions that can contribute to climate change
•3,460,000 tons of tissues and paper towels wound up in landfills in 2008
Simply put, there is no “away” in throw away. So, what is the solution? What if we each changed one habit? A habit that is just one small eco action with a big impact. What would that be? PeopleTowels. PeopleTowels are the producers of reusable personal hand towels, the eco-friendly, on-the-go alternative to paper towels and air dryers.
What makes them special? They beautifully integrate the sustainability concepts of organic, fair trade, and energy efficiency into one little towel that can help the environment in a multiple of ways. It's the little things that add up. Imagine, if 1 in 4 Adults in the U.S. switched to PeopleTowels for a year, they would:
•Save enough trees to cover the State of Alaska
•Conserve 22,000 Olympic size swimming pools of water
•Cut C02 = to the emissions of 815,000 cars
Norman Vincent Peale said, “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” Pledge to switch to PeopleTowels reusable personal hand towels for on-the-go. Change your thoughts on the use of paper towels and you change our world.
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