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Once upon a time, paper towels were not the ubiquitous household product they are now. In fact, the concept is slightly less than 100 years old. So what did people do back then to wipe hands, mop up a spill, or clean windows? Sometimes cloth hand towels did the trick, or clean rags made from scraps of worn cotton, or linen, or newspaper worked for seriously messy jobs.

A Little History
Scott® Paper invented paper towels in 1907 for use in Philadelphia classrooms to help prevent the spread of colds from child to child. They were called Sani Towels, and they were the first towels to be dispensed from a roll. Scott's web site tells the interesting history of paper towels.

In 1931, Scott introduced the first paper towel for the kitchen. An archived advertisement from the first half of the 20th century, found on the Scott Brand web site, recommends the following:

Shake water off your hands, and you'll need only one towel for thorough drying.

Tear off only one at a time. One strong absorbent ScotTowel is enough for most uses - you can reach for another if necessary.

Hold bacon on fork above frying pan or broiler to let all possible fat drip off before putting on ScotTowels.

Make one towel do double duty whenever possible. After drying fingertips for example lay towel aside for wiping up a spill or clearing scraps from the sink. ScotTowels can "take it"

Another Double duty idea. After draining lettuce or celery, dry the ScotTowel over a rack…then use again to wipe grease from frying pan or catch vegetable peels.

They had the right idea - be mindful and use only what you need. Today we describe that old fashioned value as the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle.

It Takes a Lot of Trees to Produce a Hundred Years of Paper Towels

All the trees used for paper products and building supplies come from a place that is home to some group of people and animals. Sometimes they are the result of clear cutting large tracts of land, other times these products are made from trees grown as a monoculture on pulpwood farms. It would certainly ease the burden on our natural resources if we could find ways to meet our needs without resorting to cutting down trees for paper products.

Some Statistics Comparing the Old Way with Alternatives

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP);

A ton of paper made from 100% recycled paper saves the equivalent of

4100 kwh energy
7,000 gallons of water
60 pounds of air emissions
3 cubic yards of landfill space.

More specifically, Seventh Generation, the manufacturer of Cronig's recycled paper, paper towels, maintain:

If each household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 180 sheet virgin fiber paper towels with 100% recycled ones, we could save:

864,00 trees
3.4 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 3,900 full garbage trucks
354 million gallons of water, a year’s supply for 10,100 families of four

Another remarkable statistic from Pennsylvania DEP is that "paper can potentially be recycled up to seven times before the fibers begin to deteriorate."

Recycling is only a piece of the answer. Why bother to recycle at all if it only ends up in a landfill because there is no consumer call for products with recycled content? It’s called "closing the loop", and it is about requesting and buying what we need with recycled content in mind. Since we are going to buy toilet paper anyway, why not be part of the solution by purchasing tissue made from recycled paper?

Another Danger of the Old Way

The Paper Bleaching - Chlorine - Dioxin Connection

Eliminating chlorine from paper towel production process is another reason to rethink our use of paper towels. The 1990 Clean Air Act lists chlorine as a hazardous air pollutant, and in 1993, the American Public Health Association passed a resolution advocating that American businesses terminate the use of chlorine. Yet even with these safety warnings, chlorine is present in many products. The manufacture of chlorine is also troublesome just because of the volatility of the sheer quantity of it when a mishap occurs while it is being produced or transported.

Chlorine is significantly more toxic in paper bleaching, than in other applications. It is first used to wash out the tree's natural glue for pulp production; then it is used to whiten the paper. When chlorine interacts with wood it produces dioxins.

Dioxin is the name for a highly toxic family of chlorinated organic chemicals - one of which is Agent Orange, a defoliant used in the Vietnam War. The Environmental Protection Agency's Dioxin Reassessment has determined dioxins to be 300,000 times more carcinogenic than DDT. Because they don't readily break down, we ingest them when they accumulate in the food chain, then they collect in our body fat. Scientists also believe that dioxin, and other organochlorines mimic hormones when they enter the body, and cause endocrine disruption.

The Brown Paper Towels
Brown paper towels are different than any other product on the market. They are not fluffy and linty like many conventional brands, and they aren't stiff and unabsorbent like old grammar school lavatory towels. They are strong, virtually lint free, and absorbent. Cronig's Markets carry Seventh Generation brown paper towels, which are also packaged differently. Focusing on the environmental benefits of compacting more towels per roll as a way to reduce packaging and transportation costs from factory to warehouse to Cronig's, the towels come 180 to a roll - nearly three times as many towels as the leading brand.

These towels are brown because they're made from low-grade 100% post consumer recycled paper. This means the colors of all the newspapers, cardboard, and phonebooks we recycle blend together in the manufacturing process. They are hypo-allergenic because they are made without bleach, dyes, inks, or perfumes, and they are made in the United States.

The White Paper Towels
A good compromise between conventional paper towels and brown ones is Seventh Generation white paper towels. Also made without dyes, inks, and perfumes, they are hypo-allergenic. Their source material is still low-grade recycled paper, although they have only an 80% post consumer content. These towels are bleached with sodium hydrosulfite whose by-product is oxygen and water, instead of using chlorine whose by-products are dioxin, furons, and other organochlorines.

Seventh Generation white paper towels, come three 70-sheet rolls to the package, same as conventional paper towels, and they weigh the same too. But the Seventh Generation ones cost nearly half as much per sheet! They are made in Canada.

Consider the far-reaching benefits of trying just one roll of a paper towels made from recycled paper without chlorine bleaching. Maybe leave a roll in your rental house, the office washroom, or the garage. It could develop into a healthy habit.

Paper Towel Alternatives
One idea to reduce paper towels usage is to clean windows with newspaper. It actually, works better than paper towels because it is lint free, absorbent, and a good reuse of a handy household material. One caution about newspaper: sometimes the newsprint will smear on new white vinyl framing, but it can be cleaned up with window cleaner and a sponge.

Another alternative is to designate an old kitchen sponge for wiping spills off the floor. To avoid confusion, with an indelible marker write "floor" on the sponge when it is dry, and store it under the sink. Occasionally wash it in hot water, laundry detergent, and non-chlorine bleach with other utility items.

However, when a paper towel is the perfect tool for the job, remember what it says in the Scott Brand advertisements of World War II, "Tear off only one at a time. One strong absorbent ScotTowel is enough for most uses - you can reach for another if necessary."

At Cronig's we use Seventh Generation Brown Paper Towels in place of traditional towels. These are used in employee bathrooms, lunch area as well as at every register/ check out lane.

Gain some extra saving by purchasing paper towels by the "case". When you buy a case quantity of anything at Cronig’s you receive a 10% discount.

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