Replace your paper towels with cloth dishtowels and napkins. Substitute old t-shirts for rags.

What’s In It For the Planet?

  • The average American uses 2,200 paper napkins each year. (Ideal Bite)
  • It’s cheaper to wash cloth napkins and dishtowels than it is to purchase paper ones.
  • Virgin fiber - which comes straight from a tree - is often used to produce paper napkins and paper towels.
  • When you factor in all the components required to make a single-use paper towel or napkin – harvesting the material, processing and bleaching, packaging, shipping, stocking, transporting – you find that paper towels and napkins are about twice as energy-intensive than cloth and create more greenhouse gases overall. (www.care2.com)
  • Even though cloth napkins and towels require resources to produce, they often stick around for many years.

What’s In It for You?

Maybe you thought cloth napkins were reserved for Little House on the Prairie, but we think they’re pretty hip. Colorful and eclectic napkins make a table beautiful and a meal more interesting. And, they’re cheaper than buying new paper towels and napkins. When we take joy in our tables we eat more thoughtfully and with appreciation.

Funky garage sales and flea markets are havens for knockout napkins, but you have to keep on the lookout. If you’ve got basic sewing skills, try converting old sheets and pillowcases into pretty hemmed napkins. Whether you find ‘em or make ‘em, designate a napkin ring to family members to help them remember their napkin– and encourage them to use it several times before washing.

You can also convert old, worn-out t-shirts into rags by cutting them into pieces and using them to dust surfaces and clean mirrors. Another easy money saver.

Do you have more tricks up your sleeve? Share your story with others who are also taking steps to live greener today.

Finding the Sacred in…Using Cloth

“Teaching kids to become stewards of the land, to nourish themselves, and to communicate at the table — that’s essential for the future of the human race. It teaches kids a whole set of values.”
- Alice Waters

Wanna Learn More?

Find more green home tips

Learn about the history of paper at the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum

Wanna pack a waste-free lunch?

Make your own do-it-yourself napkins

Experience the connection between agriculture, nature, and community at the Center for Land-Based Learning

Read Gary Nabhan’s book
Renewing America’s Food Traditions

 

Wanna Do More?

  • Make your own napkins and dishtowels by cutting up old sheets and hemming the edges.
  • Switch from disposable diapers to cloth diapers. It takes around 80,000 pounds of plastic and over 200,000 trees a year to manufacture the disposable diapers for American babies alone.
  • Use cloth baby wipes instead of disposable – just throw them in the wash with your cloth diapers.
  • Wash cloth napkins and dishtowels only when they are soiled. Use them multiple times before washing.

Have some suggestions of your own? Share them on HabitChat.