apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I went cold turkey on paper towels. I use rags and this product:
http://www.greenfeet.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=5501-04028-0000
It's called ecotowl or cheftowl. I have not looked back since.

Now if I could only go cold turkey on the long showers...

For some of us, it's not possible to go cold turkey on paper towels. My S/O has a peritoneal dialysis catheter -- a clear tube going straight into his belly -- and we learned during dialysis training that paper towels are required for hand hygiene because towels trap bacteria that lead to peritonitis. This means we keep paper towels in the master bathroom, which is where we clean up prior to his connections.

When he was on hemodialysis in a clinical setting, this was also preached to us. Liquid soap, hot water and paper towels are a way of life for people with tubing coming out of their bodies.

Same with bleach -- it's necessary for proper sterilization with dialysis. It may be enviro-toxic, but infections can be deadly for a dialysis patient.

Some people will always need non-green items to survive. That doesn't include most folks on this board, but please take special cases into consideration. Not everyone who uses paper towels and bleach are lazy or inconsiderate of the environment.

madampince:
You are missing the point of being green, it's not a fashion choice nobody would be green if it wasn't for the fact that non-green is unsustainable. Human beings cannot be non-green forever, no matter what sort of medical complications we have. That's why people are trying to become green. "some people will always need non-green items to survive" is just wrong, and that's the idea that websites like this are trying to change. Eventually we won't have the non-green option and then we will not survive if we don't come up with green solutions to every problem. I am a microbiologist and there actually are products out there and being developed that could eliminate the need for bleach, etc. One example is countertops with a build in layer that sterilizes completely upon simple exposure to any type of light. This borrows from nature with the idea that sunlight is actually one of the best disinfectants we have. Hospitals need to go green too, and eliminating harsh chemical cleaners will be better for patients in the long run.

On the topic of paper towels...I have always been impressed with those loops of cloth towel that roll back in the dispenser when you pull. I am not sure if that is sterile or if there is any self cleaning mechanism in the machine, or if the entire roll is just washed once its reached the end, but that would allow quick easy use of a clean towel with limited washing required.

Ralph, I'd be very pleased if the need for bleach was eliminated -- I'm not in any way a fan of it. But phrases like "no matter what sort of medical complications we have" will only turn folks against living green. I can just imagine what Rush Limbaugh would do with that quote. At this point in time green is a balancing act. It won't be that way forever, but right now it is.

As a microbiologist, I'd think you'd have to admit it would cost a lot to the environment if my S/O got peritonitis. Gas to pick up the meds, the plastic bag it comes in, extra electricity used for added time on the cycler.

I would also say that you missed the point of my entire post. I didn't explain any of the ways my S/O and I are living a green life -- and they're many -- but only stressed that, at this time, living with health problems & extremely limited means, there are still people who can't live a completely green life. Hopefully, researchers and scientists will find ways to help us do so in the future.

All the best to you.

I've seen towel dispensers in one restroom in a building I used to work in. It looks like a regular mount-on-the-wall-plastic-public-restroom dispenser, but instead of paper, it's cloth attached in a ring. So you use the dry cloth that's right below the plastic plate on the front of the dispenser, where you would normally pull out paper, then you pull on the cloth to revolve the wet spot you just used toward the back of the dispenser. It exposes a different part of the ring that's dry.

The cloth was a bit dingy because the building itself is on the Historic Buildings list, but it's a genius inveniton that i've seen nowhere else.

Sustainability is a numbers game. There will always be plastic, for example. It will eventually be much more expensive, when we run out of oil and have to make polymers from syngas. We won't waste plastic on silly disposable things like bags or packaging, and the environment, not to mention the economy, will do much better if we get a jump on that now. There are far too many unnecessary things we use plastic for and when we run out of the oil used to make it we will regret them. But there will always be specialized applications that require plastic. And there may always be special applications that require paper towels. Chopping down the rainforest is not sustainable, but growing a certain number of trees so that
the children of our sustainable future can scribble artwork to hang our their parent's carbon neutral refrigerators and medical patients can avoid infection is still sustainable.

But not everyone needs to use paper towels. Those roller towels work pretty well and sadly seem to have fallen out of fashion. I worked for two summers in an ice cream parlor that had one. The internal mechanism doesn't sterilize the material. It just unwinds from one roll and winds back up on another. When all of the clean material runs out, you put in a new roll and the old one goes into a hamper. The laundry service came by every month or so to pick up all the dirty rolls and replace them with a supply of clean ones. I suspect they also did the laundry for the local hospital and nursing homes, since it was a small town.

It was very green, very clean, and pretty handy. It did have a tendency to jam, where the fabric would get caught as it wound back up into the machine. It wasn't too hard to fix and I suspect this happened mostly because the machine was old. I can't see people wanting one in their home because of the bulkiness, but if you ran a place of business, it might not be to hard to find one in a supply catalog and I would imagine most commercial laundry services could handle the towels, even if it's not something they do a lot of.

hey i have a great idea! all those doctors and nurses using disposable gloves in hospitals - they could just use their bare hands!!! wow - we'd save a lot of latex or whatever they're made of and .001 % of our landfill space every year.

;) sorry i have to be the class clown.

ralph - i wish that green bleach products would come out soon because the only substance on our planet that kills viruses, bacteria, worms, etc. is bleach as you know from being a MB. when/what are the products? can you post with more info. this is a subject i'm really interested in.

when i took micro, we swabbed public toilets, drinking fountains, our washed and unwashed hands, stair rails, etc. Then we cultured them after swiping over each culture with several different cleaning products. one future midwife brought in her pure tea tree oil that she always used on cuts or cleaning (long time ago i forget). nothing worked except bleach in my recollection.

madampince - don't feel guilty using paper towels! just buy the recycled kind and that's as good as going to confession to get rid of the guilt!

(hp rules btw :) did anyone ever ask JKR if madam pince is snape's mum in hiding? that was a big theory that i don't think ever got answered ...)