Rags vs. Paper Towels

In my couponing days, I used to stock up on paper towels because I got a good deal.  Good, not great.  I have not purchased paper towels in a year and half and am now reaching the end of my stock.  I don't want to buy more!  So, as a transition, I have been trying to use rags as much as I can instead of paper towels.  Yes, that means I'm reheating that muffin on a plate instead of a paper towel, cleaning up spilled purple grape juice and risking a stain, but I'm also saving money and producing less garbage.

My only worry was that my rag (and my house) would smell like vinegar all day.  FALSE!  If you rinse the rag after each use, it doesn't stink.  I just happened to have 7 old wash cloths lying around that I used to use for household cleaning (I have now switched to old cloth diaper prefolds - less lint).  I just use one rag and throw it in the laundry at the end of the day.  I am proud to say the roll of paper towel sitting on my counter is only 6 sheets shy of a full roll!  Try it for a week and see what happens.

Here's some paper towel facts thanks to Attempts at a Simpler Life

• According to the EPA 3,460,000 tons of tissues and paper towels wound up in landfills in 2008.  Oh my, did you notice that the figure is in tons.  That is equal to 6,920,000 pounds!!!!  That is over 2 lbs. of paper towels and tissues per person.  I did a little experiment and weighed a paper towel on my food scale and it would take approximately as many paper towels as there are days in a year to equal two pounds.  So really, one a day doesn't seem like much, but when it is everyone in the country the amount of waste becomes enormous!  I'm not even sure my statistics are right either, because I think I use more than one paper towel a day and I try to use them very judiciously.
• As many as 51,000 trees per day are required to replace the number of paper towels that are discarded every day.
• If every household in the U.S. used just one less 70-sheet roll of virgin fiber paper towels, that would save 544,000 trees each year. Change that to using three less rolls per U.S. household per year, and that would save 120,000 tons of waste and $4.1 million in landfill dumping fees.  I would like to add,  if we reduce our consumption/demand for paper towels we are also reducing the demand to transport them, which means we are using less oil and causing less air pollution.  Is that a trifecta of environmentalism or what!?!?!
• An immense amount of water is used to make paper towels.  According to Wiki Answers (I know this isn't the best source, but I could find so little on this topic) you would need 38-50 gallons of water to produce one pound of paper towels.  Quick quiz - How many pounds of paper towels and tissues did the EPA say were going to landfills (hint: see above)?  You do the math, almost 7 million pounds times 38 gallons of water (we will be safe and play it conservatively) equals how much wasted fresh water?
• When paper rots in our landfills it emits methane which contributes to global warming.