Yeah, I question these things.
Paper towels worry me.
I don’t like the waste. I fuss about overuse in my house. I fuss about how much we pay for the dang things to kill trees.
So I’m always looking for the hack, the trick. A better way, I guess.
There’s really not much more you can do. The 1/2 towel brands help. Other than outright banning them from the house, we are just so accustomed to having them.
Well, I was looking at a hack guy online and it was about kitchen cleaning. He took the roll of paper towels and pressed it, where the seam was, against the kitchen faucet and made a wet circle on the roll.
Put them in the holder.
Why would they do that?
What is the purpose of a wet/damp ring where the roll starts?
Nevertheless, I’m trying it when I put a new roll on.
Well, what does Mr. Life Hacks think is the purpose? They never tell you why, just that it will change your life and from now on, you will do it their way.
Yes, I’m familiar with the type. You see a pair of hands waving around and pointing at things, doing some “amazing” thing using old junk while Life Hack music plays in the background. You watch and say, “now isn’t that clever”, then you forget all about it.
Most of the ones I’ve seen like that are deliberately satirical, featuring “life hacks” which accomplis nothing other than making the viewer ask “why would you ever want to do that?”
I bought a bunch of washcloths to use instead of paper towels in the kitchen. I made a point of buying white ones so they go in the load of whites each week and get bleached.
I use paper towels too much, myself. I try to cut down and I compost them when I’m done, but once again, America needs to look to the rest of the world.
ETA washcloths are great for kitchen towels, can be a pot holder in a pinch.
This is why I also use paper towels. I’ll rip strips off them to use rather than the full towel whenever possible, but for critter cleanup it’s paper all the way. And yes, the used ones go into the compost bin, along with the compostable corn, wheat, etc. litter.
Oh, I have a giant drawer full of wash clothes, shop rags, used to be a towel cloths, fancy printed ones, there’s a Santa one hanging on the stove handle right now.
Yeah, cats, dogs, grandkids, finicky Nana. So paper towels aren’t leaving permanently. But I do try to reduce and we compost or burn. No trash pickup out here.
The last two times I defrosted my (landlord’s) fridge-top freezer, I used two unrolled rolls of paper towels to sop up the melted water. (pardon the hack)
Are paper towels particularly unfriendly to the environment? A tree grows and takes carbon out of the atmosphere, trapping it within the cellulose molecules of the tree. The tree gets cut down, ground up into tiny bits, mixed with some water and chemicals, and turned into a useful little towel. You wipe up some spilled milk with it, throw it in the trash or compost, and the carbon remains trapped, or returns to the soil as the towel degrades. If a new sapling is planted in place of the old tree, the process continues.
It seems to me that the whole process captures some carbon from the atmosphere. The trucks that hauls the trees out of the forest burn diesel, and the plants that grind up the trees and make the towels have to be powered somehow. It’s also possible that the new sapling captures less carbon from the atmosphere than if the original tree was left in place. If you put a parking lot where the old tree was, that would suck, but as long as people buy paper towels there will be a need for new trees.
So where does the paper-towel cycle rank in terms of environmental consequences?
The towel-based lifehack I remember is always folding your towels in half to take advantage of increased capillary action (I think it was). In other words, it would dry off better. Also, shake your hands after washing to get rid of excess water before using the single paper towel.
There’s an environmental cost to all our disposables.
Even EV vehicles. All the electricity it takes to recharge them comes from natural resources in the beginning of the process. Building them takes resources. That battery has cobalt which is mined using child and slave labor in mines.
So nothing is perfect.
I like to sleep at night, but I worry about the little things I can do.
The tree industry is big business in little ol’ Arkansas.
Many many people feed their families as a result.
So I am in a quandary how I feel about it.
I like trees. I have lots.
My husband has a small tree farm. When it’s been cut, he has replanted. As soon as possible. It’s a big paycheck to cut it, part goes back into it.
Has anyone seen a good analysis that shows that paper towels are environmentally worse than rags or sponges? This article compares one aspect, water usage, between paper towels and washable rags, and concludes that they use about the same amount of water. Actually the author calculates that rags use 5 times as much water as paper towels, but then just pulls a fudge factor out of his ass to make them approximately equal.
Energy usage is another aspect: we need to compare the energy required to produce paper towels with the energy required to wash rags (water heating, washing machine power, drying, etc). Then there’s water pollution and water treatment needed for washing rags; probably lower for paper towels but water pollution in paper production needs to be considered. In solid landfill waste, rags probably come out ahead.
It would be interesting to see a thorough analysis of all the issues but I haven’t found one.
Back to the OP, my only guess is the life hack genius is thinking that the wet circle on the paper towel roll makes it easier to break the seam and get the first paper towel loose from the roll. I don’t think it would actually do that but I can’t think of another reason to make a wet ring on a paper towel roll.