family holiday dinner. They now sit in a woven basket near our dining table. I quickly realized the versatility of cloth napkins and slowly picked up more whenever I was near Goodwill, which always has many sets to choose from. It does mean I have a mix of patterns, but I'm okay with that.
Along with ditching paper napkins, I decided to see how things would go without paper towels. I took them off the counter and was amazed to see how little we missed them. For any type of large spill, we now grab an old towel. The only other time I was using paper towels was to dry produce after washing it, or for wrapping lettuce to store in the fridge. I now use cloth napkins in both cases without a problem. The disappearance of the paper towels led me to my first re-purposing idea with the paper towel holder.
 |
| Placing my daughter's headbands and ponytail holders visibly on the counter instead of stuffed in a drawer makes them much more likely to be used. |
As for toilet paper, I've always bought a brand that is 100% recycled and non-bleached, but I switched to one that is also individually wrapped in paper, avoiding the disposable plastic wrapper from the bundles. Seventh Generation makes such a product, which is available at Earth Origins and the Gainesville Citizens Co-op, but CVS sells their brand, Earth Essentials, for a bit cheaper, so that's the winner for me. The paper wrapper can be recycled or composted, as can the paper tube roll. Empty tp rolls can also be re-used for many art activities, as well as for starting seedlings to transplant into the garden.
The last paper product I re-considered were tissues. The zero waste thing to do is to replace them with a handkerchief, but my other family members are not willing to go that route at this time. Luckily, we don't have a need for tissues very often, so for now my plan is to use up what we have, and then re-evaluate our options again before buying more.
So that's it for disposable paper products. It might not sound like much, but it's a very good start. Although I was previously buying disposable napkins and paper towels made from recycled materials and then composting them, it now makes so much more sense to simply not buy them. Not only have I saved money by no longer purchasing these items, it has saved me time at the grocery store too. For those who might argue that I now spend more time and resources on cleaning re-usable napkins and towels, I haven't found that to be the case. My family definitely uses cloth napkins far less frequently than we used disposable ones, and I don't wash them after every use, unless someone is sick. Our towel usage hasn't gone up either. I've always averaged about 1 load of towels every 2 weeks, which is what I average now. I will admit that there have been a few times when a disposable towel made more sense than a re-usable one, but those occasions have only come up two times during the last year. One was when we needed to wipe up some oil. The other was when someone broke a drinking glass with liquid inside. In both cases, I used a few paper towels from the last roll I bought...a year and a half ago. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to clean up messes like these in a way that doesn't create landfill waste.
Thanks for stopping by,
Allison
No comments:
Post a Comment