Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Reduce Paper Towels

I know that most of you are environmentally conscious and take all the steps to reduce your carbon footprint and live in a sustainable way. I also know that you reduce reuse and recycle. But I am flabbergasted by the general population’s ignorance about this.

How to use one paper towel

Now, I can’t go advising random strangers that I meet in the toilet. But what I can definitely do is share a video with my friends (you guys) and in turn hope that you spread the advice. Till about last year (when I saw this video for the first time), I always used 2 paper towels to dry after washing my hands in a public restroom. 2 because 1 paper towel by itself, always tore quite easily and made a sticky mess of shredded paper on my hand. That was, till I saw this video. I implore you to see it. It’s little over 4 minutes and I am sure you can make time to see it right now.

The gist of this TEDx video by Joe Smith is -

  1. Shake your hands vigorously after washing to get rid of the excess water
  2. Take 1 paper towel and fold it
  3. Use the folded paper towel to wipe your fingers and your palm

And why is this technique effective? Well, simply because once you fold the paper it allows “interstitial suspension” (Joe’s words not mine). I researched what that means and apparently the water gets absorbed in between the paper folds and thus 1 paper is effective enough to dry water off your already shaken hands.


  1. I always wonder why do people pull out 3-4 c-folds at a time... it's so irritating to see them do that stuff and then they don't even fully utilise it..

  2. I had another question Girish... Is it environment friendly to use a paper towel and cut down trees or use the hand drier and burn coal :) ??

    Btw I use a handkerchief :)

    1. That's a difficult question to answer. The answer depends on evaluating the Carbon footprint and environmental impact of the entire cycles of (Paper Production + Recycling) vs (Hand Drier Production + Maintenance + Electricity). The electricity impact will greatly depend on where your country's electricity production is from - renewable, nuclear or thermal. If it's mainly nuclear or renewable, I am assuming the carbon footprint is negligible. Also then we have to evaluate the impact of the variable use of paper towels vs. the variable amount of time spent by each individual with the drier. In general, I have concluded that as long as I live a frugal life and control my impact to the minimum, I am doing less harm. And yes, even I use handkerchief :)