Last May here at Tree Hugging Family we hosted the Stop Using Paper Towels Green Challenge. We had a lot of success, but some folks had complaints about my saying cloth is perfect for everything (I haven’t bought paper towles in years). Some said, once in a while you DO need paper towels, the biggest factor being pets. Pets make kind of icky messes according to pet owners. Mainly there are three trains of use we saw.

You always use paper towels.
You never use paper towels.
You use both cloth and paper towels.

Besides 100% recycled content paper towels, (not perfect but way …read more

The paper towel challenge has been a tad bit quiet, but maybe some of you are following along in silence. Or maybe you’re saving it for next month.
I feel that just keeping track of my use has helped me reduce my consumption of paper towels. I figured I was already being good by not using them to dry my hands, for napkins, or most cleaning jobs, but I found out I was reaching for them more than I thought. I used one roll from May 1-23, and have used a little of a second roll since then. I’m going to …read more

Have you been following the Paper Towel Challenge this month? I posted an update last week.
I believe I’ve made progress on reducing my paper towel use. I started a new roll on May 1, and I used the last sheet tonight. Twenty-three days for one roll among two people and a cat isn’t so bad, but I would prefer to only use one roll for the entire month.
The cat did vomit earlier this week, like all cats do. I picked it up with some of his play tissue (recycled from packaging), and I threw that in the trash. Then I …read more