Source: PeopleTowels

Back in December 2010, a company called PeopleTowels who produced reusable personal hand towels, eco-friendly, on-the-go alternative to paper towels. 

They also replace electric air dryers, which adds an additional environmental advantage gained by eliminating paper towel usage – aka reduced CO2 emissions!

This latest environmental component has been added to the PeopleTowels’ benefit statement:

Each person who switches from paper towels outside the home to PeopleTowels will save 1/4 of a tree, conserve 250 gallons of water, cut carbon emissions by 34 lbs. and reduce landfill waste by 23 lbs. in one year. 

Other examples are:

  • 20,000 gallons of water are polluted and 24 trees are consumed to make one ton of paper towels – all for a single use and thrown away.
  • Every day, over 3,000 tons of paper towel waste is produced in the U.S., alone.
  • Paper towels, decomposing in landfills, emit powerful greenhouse gases. 
  • Paper is the largest contributor to municipal landfill waste in 2006.
  • The average person uses 2,400 – 3,000 paper towels outside the home each year, producing waste that looks like this:

“PeopleTowels is such a common-sense idea that makes it so clear what we can do to reduce the waste we generate in our everyday lives. What’s less clear is how much our wasteful lifestyle increases our carbon footprint,” comments Wood Turner,ClimateCounts.org, Executive Director. “We need to understand more clearly how a culture of reuse can not only reduce what goes into landfills, but it can also limit our collective impact on global climate change. PeopleTowels has taken an important step in putting its unique concept into that critical context.”

“Our goal is to eliminate paper towel use outside the home by at least 50 percent by 2015,” declared Mary Wallace, PeopleTowels Visionary and Co-Founder. “Meeting this goal would result in an annual reduction of green house gas emissions from paper towels used outside the home from the current 3.8M tons to 1.9M tons.”

PeopleTowels’ carbon emission calculation was based on the average quantity of paper towels (3,000) used by one person outside of the home a year in the U.S. and referenced information from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waste Reduction Model (WARM), Carbon Rally, the Environmental Defense Fund and in consultation with Climate Counts.\

For more facts about the environmental impact of paper towels, click here.

The Other Alternatives
Paper towels, even when made of recycled materials, still produce an impact 100% greater than PeopleTowels. The recycling process, as well as production from virgin pulp, uses water, energy and chemicals.
Electric hand dryers may seem better than paper towels, but they aren’t as efficient as PeopleTowels, and carry a heavy environmental burden.

Stop Waste Before it Starts – Precycle with Reusable PeopleTowels

The PeopleTowels’ Formula summarizes the environmental benefits of reusable PeopleTowels:

The green sustainable choice is clear: precycle with reusable PeopleTowels and stop waste before it starts.