Thank you for wanting to know more

We are so glad you are interested in paper and its impact on Earth. It is a confusing area with a lot of facts, opinions and interpretations.

We take the following position

Paper definitely has some adverse impact on our ecosystems on Earth.

There can be a lot of debate about the amount of damage to the ecosystem. Our intent is to not get into the debate of how much. Regardless of how large the impact is, we wish to reduce it by reducing the quantity of paper towels wasted.

We just want to teach people to waste fewer paper towels and help Earth in some amount that way.

We also want to help volunteers achieve their volunteering goals.

Thats our position!

A few facts about paper

• Paper requires a lot of fresh water to manufacture (estimated at about 8 trillion gallons per year, by paper and pulp industries)
  • Manufacturers are attempting to recycle some water and to use some wastewater
  • While this reduces the amount of freshwater used, there’s still going to be significant impact.
• Paper manufacturing creates a lot of effluents.
  • Manufacturers are attempting to reduce this and treat the output fluids to reduce impact on aquatic ecosystems.
  • While they are trying to reduce impact, There’s still going to be significant impact.
• Paper requires a lot of trees. 4 billion trees a year (for all paper. Not just paper towels.). That’s 35% of all tree felling worldwide.
  • The use of printed paper is going down. But paper towel use is going up.
  • Manufacturers are trying to replant trees quickly so that new forest does not have to be cut down as much as was done before.
• Harvesting all those trees, transporting them, and transporting the paper products uses energy.
  • Most of that energy is used by burning something (liquid fuels, coal, etc).
  • Burning also causes some pollution.
  • Transporting paper towels takes a lot more trucks than printed paper sheets because paper towels are light and can’t be pressed much.
• Once the paper is used, a lot of it will go into trash. With paper towels, it’s nearly all of it.
  • Collection of paper towel trash requires a lot of plastic trash bags.
  • It takes energy to move the trash to landfills.
  • Landfills generate gases while decomposing.
• Paper towels made with recycled paper make for a very small fraction of paper towels
  • They are of lower quality. (Color, tear strength, softness, absorbtion capability)
  • They don’t save much water.