Post Originally Written April 21, 2010
Tomorrow is Earth Day and tonight I’m perplexed about a new product from Kleenex. I saw the ad on TV twice last night and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
The premise…straight from their website (http://www.kleenex.com/handtowels/home.aspx), is as follows:
“People in the U.S. dry their hands on cloth bathroom towels approximately 200 billion times a year. The CDC guidelines for hand washing recommends hand drying with a single-use towel. Families have not had a practical alternative to traditional cloth hand towels in their home bathrooms… until now.”
While maybe they have a point that germs could be spread using traditional cloth towels, I’m still surprised by this “innovation”. I feel like more and more people are moving to a greener lifestyle – steering away from single use items wherever possible. To see a new product enter the market touting it’s disposability just seems counterintuitive.
So, then I thought – OK, if they are going to create a single use towel in this day and age surely that towel will have recycled content. And, of course, be recyclable. If the towels are either of those, they are not mentioned on the website. My assumption – no recycled content, not recyclable.
To me, there should be a better solution to this problem. If the Kleenex towels become successful, I hope a competitor quickly jumps on board and discovers a better solution. In fact, I just remembered! I know a company who has just the product – PEOPLE TOWELS! Here is the description from their website:
PeopleTowels™ is the newest concept in sustainability – 100% organic cotton, reusable personal hand towels that make going green as easy as drying your hands. Switch from paper towels to PeopleTowels to dry your hands in public facilities to saves trees and reduce waste.
And, they have very cute designs!
Save a tree – Use People Towels instead. Check out their website at http://www.peopletowels.com/
All of my life, we have used a “common” towel in the bathroom and to date there hasn’t been a big germ spreading issue. Our house will not be using these new disposable towels. However, I’m thinking we may be ordering some People Towels 🙂