34: How to Quit Using Paper Towels (and What to Use Instead)

Paper towels are one of those everyday items most of us don’t think twice about — until we do. They’re convenient, familiar, and deeply embedded in our kitchen routines. But when you slow down and look at what goes into making something designed to be used once and thrown away, it becomes worth questioning.

In this solo episode of Sustainable in the Suburbs, I’m talking about how to quit (or significantly reduce) paper towel use in a way that’s practical, flexible, and rooted in real life. I share how paper towels quietly disappeared from our home years ago, why they’re so easy to overuse, and what actually works instead.

We dig into the environmental and financial cost of paper towels, how ideas about cleanliness and convenience shape our habits, and why changing what’s within reach can naturally change behaviour. I also walk through realistic reusable alternatives, storage and laundry concerns, edge cases where disposables still make sense, and what to do if you already have paper towels at home.

The focus is on choosing reusables where they make sense, and how small changes add up over time in everyday life.

Takeaways

• Why paper towels are designed to be overused — and why that’s not a personal failure.
• The environmental impact of single-use paper products.
• Practical alternatives to paper towels that work in everyday homes.
• How small behavioural changes can reduce waste.
• Why using fewer paper towels still matters, even if you don’t eliminate them entirely.

One Small Shift

Take the paper towel roll off your counter and put it somewhere else — under the sink, in a cupboard, or the pantry. Just notice what you reach for instead over the next week or two.

Related Episodes

8: 5 Easy Plastic-Free Kitchen Swaps for Sustainable Living

11: Money, Enoughness, and Community Care with Women's Personal Finance

33: Fewer, Better Things — How to Reduce Kitchen Clutter and Waste

Resources

What to Use Instead of Paper Towels (all my favourite products)

How to Knit a Dish Cloth (free PDF pattern)

10 Zero Waste Kitchen Swaps That Save You Money (blog post)

A Beginner's Guide to a Sustainable Kitchen (use code PODCAST20)

Transcript

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (00:00.62)
Let's talk about something small today. Not small in impact, just small in the sense that it's part of our normal routine and very easy to overlook. Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco-curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I'm your host, Sarah Robertson-Barnes, a soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living. Each week, I'll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less,

save money and make small doable shifts that actually fit your real life. Because sustainable living doesn't have to be perfect to matter and you don't have to do it all to make a difference. Hello and welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have and live a little greener, one small shift at a time. My name is Sarah and I'm really happy to be spending time with you today. Just a reminder that this show is currently listener supported.

So if you've been enjoying the podcast, it would be awesome if you shared this episode with your network or left a rating and a review in your podcast player that really helps folks find the show. And you can also click support the show in the show notes, or if you head over to sustainable in the suburbs.com slash podcast, you can find the show notes for every episode. And there's a little spot there for you to suggest a topic or any guests that you'd like to hear as well.

So this episode has been sitting in my notes for a long time. Even when I was just thinking about starting a podcast, doing an episode on quitting paper towels was always the example that I would give when I was chatting about it with someone because I can talk about that for 30 straight minutes. So I guess I am about to do just that. But this episode has also been sitting in drafts for a few weeks because it felt...

Really silly and pointless when the world is very heavy right now. And I have been struggling with it all, like I know so many of us are. So in an effort to stop doom scrolling, I made myself boil on my dishcloths and go through my tea towels because silly little tasks like that helped me with the existential dread. And then my friends at Women's Personal Finance reminded me that small acts of sustainability

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (02:21.704)
and anti-consumerism are radical in a system that requires overconsumption to exist. So let's keep talking about paper towels.

I stopped buying paper towels in 2016, I think. They stopped being a part of our shopping list and how our kitchen worked. So once that habit was changed, I kind of forgot about them. They just quietly left my life and I don't really think about them too much unless I'm in someone else's kitchen. I think I hesitated on this episode too because paper towels are really tied up in like very normal everyday things with kids and spills and...

cleaning and dealing with messes, especially when you're already tired and they feel practical and familiar, just a part of our everyday lives, especially after the pandemic, like I totally get it. Paper towels are designed to be used once and thrown away, which is fine until you realize how often you're reaching for them without really thinking. And once you notice that, it opens the door to choosing to reuse in ways that are honestly pretty low effort.

So this episode is just a conversation about one very normal, very common habit and what happens when we pause and ask, do I actually need as much of this thing as I think I do? Could I use less? So we're going to talk about what this looks like in real life, not in a perfect quote, zero waste kitchen, which nobody has, but in a normal home with messes and time pressure and constraints and days where convenience just wins. no, you don't have to quit paper towels after this episode.

If all it does is help you use a little less, then that's already meaningful. I saw a post on threads, Instagram, I can't remember, recently that said something like, people always say I could go vegan except for cheese and bacon. So do it. Go vegan except for cheese and bacon, except make it paper towels. So reduce comes first in the three Rs for a reason. Okay. So let's talk about putting paper towels and what to use instead.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (04:27.234)
So what's the big deal about paper towels? Well, paper towels are designed to be used once and thrown away. That's not an accident, that's the product. Use it once and throw it away. And when you step back and look at what goes into making them, that design choice starts to feel a little off. To make paper towels, you need trees and their paper. You also need a lot of water and a lot of energy. According to environmental impact data, summarized by the Environmental Paper Network,

and other pulp and paper industry researchers, producing paper products is one of the most resource intensive manufacturing processes out there, largely because of how much water and energy it requires. So to put this into perspective, according to data compiled by the EPM, producing a single ton of paper products requires about 17 full grown trees and roughly 20,000 gallons of water. So that's about 75,000 liters that we're using

not for food, not for drinking, not leaving in the environment, but for paper towels that will be used for a few seconds and then thrown away. Most conventional paper towels are also chemically bleached to be bright white, which adds another layer of water use and chemical processing. Then they're wrapped in plastic and shipped, often very long distances. Again, all for a product that's meant to be used once and discarded.

So even paper towels that are made from recycled content are definitely better, but not impact free. They still have to be broken down, cleaned, pulped, reformed. Again, all of that taking energy and water all over again. And once you've actually used the paper towel, that's the end of the line. And most of them end up in the trash. And like we've talked about in previous episodes, nothing really breaks down in the landfill. According to the IPCC,

Organic materials like paper break down without oxygen in landfills and that causes them to release methane, which is a greenhouse gas that's more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Not good. It's also important to mention that while they are paper, paper towels are typically not recyclable. Mostly because they're wet or they're contaminated with food or grease or cleaners, but they are compostable.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (06:41.996)
However, composting rules, municipal composting rules vary a lot by location. So please check what is accepted where you live. And in general, paper towels can be composted at home if they haven't been used with chemical cleaners. So things like wiping up water or food spills or crumbs are usually fine for a home compost system. If they have been used with conventional cleaning products or disinfectants or anything like that, then they are better off going in the trash.

Composting is definitely better than sending them to landfill, but it is still a workaround for something that only exists for a few minutes, which is why reusables tend to make the bigger difference over time. So if composting is part of how you're handling paper towels right now, that's awesome. And if over time you find yourself using fewer paper towels altogether, then that's where the shift is really gonna add up. Then there's the cost side, which tends to hide in plain sight. It's usually not something we buy every week.

But according to consumer reports, paper towels typically cost somewhere between one and three dollars per roll. That's in US dollars, depending on the brand and where you buy them. And most households go through several rolls a month. I've read up to 80 rolls a year in some places. Over the course of the year, that can easily add up to a couple hundred dollars spent on something to be thrown in the trash immediately. And again, that's where reusable start to feel less like

a lifestyle statement and more like a practical money saving decision. Reusable cloths and towels are usually a one time and infrequent purchase. So you use them, you wash them and you keep using them. Swedish dish cloths are a good example. According to manufacturing data and then retailers like Zero Waste Store, one Swedish dish cloth can replace up to 17 rolls of paper towels over its lifetime. And then it can be composted at the end of its life.

What this really comes down to is just noticing how many resources sit behind something we don't really think about and realizing that that doesn't have to be the default.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (08:48.952)
This is where the behavioral piece really matters because the way we use paper towels isn't random, it's intentionally designed. They are cheap, they're disposable, and they're always right there. They live on the counter, within arm's reach, ready to go. So of course we reach for them. They're also, the way they perforate them poorly is almost in a way that guarantees ways. So you rip off too much or not enough or half of one, or you grab one and realize it's not quite doing the job, so you get another.

And before you know it, you've used three sheets for a spill and you don't even really remember making that decision because that ease is intentional. Since like the fifties, we've been heavily conditioned by advertising to associate clean with disposable. Soap companies and cleaning brands did a really good job of selling the idea that modern responsible households rely on paper towels and wipes and single use products and that anything reusable is somehow less sanitary and less safe.

And a lot of that messaging stuck, even though most everyday messes probably don't require that level of cleaning. So when we overuse paper towels, it's not because we're careless or wasteful people. It's because we've been trained culturally, commercially to equate cleanliness with disposability and convenience with hygiene. And once you see that, it gets easier to let yourself off the hook about it.

It also makes it clear that changing the habit isn't about willpower. It's about interrupting a system that was designed to make disposables feel automatic. And that's where some small practical shifts really start to add up.

So if you're listening to all this and thinking, okay, but I cannot deal with quitting paper towels overnight. That's good news. You don't have to. The first and easiest shift is to simply put them away. Just take the roll off the counter and move it somewhere slightly less convenient. A cupboard or under the sink or in the pantry. Somewhere you can still access it, but where it's no longer the automatic first move. It's out of sight really does mean out of mind.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (10:55.81)
What tends to happen is that when the roll isn't there, you start reaching for what is right there instead. The dish towel, cloth, just whatever you are using, whatever you have on hand, and you don't even have to try very hard. You just notice yourself using fewer paper towels without really thinking about it. And this move alone often leads to a pretty big reduction. Not because you're forcing yourself to change, but just because you've changed your environment a little bit. You interrupted that automatic reach.

And as ever, that's one of the key themes of this podcast. You don't have to overhaul all of your habits at once. You don't have to be strict with yourself. Sometimes the most effective shift is just making that default convenience a little less obvious and seeing what happens next.

Once the paper towel roll isn't front and center anymore, the next obvious question is, okay, so what do I use instead? And this is where I want to keep things very simple and very flexible. You don't need special products. You don't need a whole new system. In most cases, you probably already have what you need in your home. For everyday messes, dish drying, whatever, tea towels do a lot of the heavy lifting. Old ones...

thrifted ones, gifted ones, even the slightly sad ones that you don't really care about anymore. I also recently discovered a brand called Dish Towels, D-I-S-C-H, which are made from recycled plastic bottles that are designed to be really absorbent and doable. They're fantastic. they dry like, it's amazing. It's actually amazing. I'm so happy that we have found, we only have two.

and they are in high rotation. They're fantastic. They're a good example of something that's made specifically to be reused again and again. You can also just use cut up old cotton t-shirts or flannel sheets. You can thrift flannel sheets. Nothing fancy. If it's cotton or linen, it works. These are great for spills, quick wipe downs, anything you'd normally grab a paper towel for without thinking. If you have some sewing skills, you can serge the edges, but I do not.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (13:06.776)
have this skill. But it's a cool way to teach yourself how to do those kinds of things because it's pretty low stakes. So great way to learn a new skill too. Knitted or crocheted dishcloths are another great staple to have in your kitchen. They're especially good for washing dishes and wiping counters and they hold up really well over time. I have a super simple pattern for a knitted dishcloth for you on my website and I'll link that in the show notes.

And twice now I have scored a huge ball of cotton yarn at the thrift store. And then I just crank out dishcloths while I'm in the passenger seat or watching TV. And then we use them in our home and I give a bunch away to friends. Also a great way to learn a new skill and not to scroll. Then there are Swedish dishcloths, which come up a lot in these conversations because they are a star product in my opinion. They are made out of plant cellulose.

They're super absorbent, washable, and last a lot longer than you think. And then they can be composted at the end of their life. These are fantastic for spills or just wiping down your counter and stove top. They also have super cute patterns on them. So you can add a little whimsy to your kitchen that way. And then there is a category that is called un-paper towels, which are basically cloth towels that are made specifically to replace paper towels. So you can get them in stacks.

or in a roll style version that stick together. So they do sit right on a paper towel dispenser and work in the exact same way. My friend Carla at Dye Dream Creative makes tie-dye flannel on paper towels, which are perfect because the tie-dye hides stains amazingly well. And they're also a nice reminder that things don't have to look beige or boring if you don't want them to. And the more you wash flannel, the more absorbent it gets. So they just get better with age.

And if you like that familiarity of using paper towel on a roll, I think the paper towels that stick together like that and fit on the dispenser are a really good option. They're perfect for transition because they use the same muscle memory. You reach, you tear, you wipe just without the constant throwing away. So that'll ease you into the laundry portion of this as well. The big takeaway here is that you don't need all of these. You don't. It's just more about noticing the kind of...

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (15:27.806)
mess that you're dealing with, how you're actually using your paper towels, and then choosing something reusable that makes sense for that moment and what you like using. I know I just mentioned knitting a zillion dishcloths, but I hate using them. I like the dish brush, but my husband likes the cloth and we both do the dishes, so we use both. Once you start doing that, grabbing a cloth or a tea towel instead of a paper towel, it stops feeling like a swap and it just becomes what you do.

And that's what we're going for here.

So really common question I get whenever I talk about this is, but where am gonna keep all this stuff? And I totally get that. Storage is real barrier in many kitchens, especially if your kitchen is already tight on space or you don't have a lot of space around your home. But I wanna flip that question a little bit, which is where are you storing your paper towels now? Especially if it's a Costco size pack, because those take up space too. And usually a lot of it, a pantry shelf, a closet, the laundry room, the basement.

sometimes all of the above. So in our house, it's, the system is pretty simple. It doesn't take up a lot of space. We have one kitchen drawer beside the sink that holds all of our reusables. So I roll the tea towels for dishes. Then we have the knitted dish cloths for washing and the Swedish dish cloths for spills and wipe downs. Those are just like in a little stack beside the rolled tea towels. And then the cloth napkins are all in there too. Everything lives in one place.

And once you know what's for what, you really don't have to think about it. You just grab it, just like a paper towel. Then I keep a small plastic basket under the sink. And that's for collecting everything in between laundry days. If I end up with a damp cloth, I just hang it over the edge of the basket to dry so it doesn't get funky in the meantime. And once you see how little space this actually takes up, then the storage question pens to solve itself.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (17:25.516)
Let's talk about the big objection. And this is the one I hear all the time. What about all the laundry? Trust me when I say that it is not more laundry. I promise you. Whenever I'm throwing in a load of household linens, like the sheets and towels, I just grab the basket from under the sink. That's it. There's no additional loads or water or detergent. There's maybe a little extra folding, but that counts as not doom scrolling too.

Just a practical note, I always hang my Swedish dishcloths to dry between uses. They will get real mangled in shape in the dryer. And I think this helps them keep their shape and it helps them last longer. I've seen some say like, these can last up to six months. No, I've had some for well over a year. And I think that the hanging to dry is a part of that.

I also only really use water with my Swedish dish cloths. find like when I'm cleaning, I find they really hold on to soap and cleaner and their sponge. And they can be hard to completely get it out between uses. So I just use them to wipe up spills and like wipe off surfaces and all the water around the sink and things like that. But your mileage may vary. So just see how you like them.

Over time, my tea towels also naturally get downgraded as they wear and tear. And honestly, I think this is where a lot of people already have an instinctive system, whether you realize it or not, like Monica Geller and her 11 categories of towels. So, guests, fancy guests, your hand towels, bath towels, fancy kitchen, kitchen, your old cleaning towels, the nice tea towel that goes on the stove, the dog towel, and so on. So most of us are already doing some version of that.

And that's how the life cycle of an item should work. Use it until it's no longer usable. For cleaning, I do have like my category seven or whatever towels that I use for cleaning. So if you're worried about mixing this up, like especially for the bathroom or the towel used to clean the toilet, there are a couple of ways to handle that. Some people use a color coded system because I'm using downgraded towels. I just take a Sharpie and draw a big X on the towels that are only for the toilet.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (19:39.502)
It's very clear, simple, no confusion. That's a toilet towel. And then once you even have a loose system in place like this, the laundry piece really stops feeling like a barrier. It's just part of how your household already works.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (19:53.614)
So let's slow down for a minute and talk about situations, the okay, but what about situations? Because there is of course some anxiety around paper towels and there are absolutely times when disposables make sense. So if you're dealing with raw meat and bacon fat, anything where sanitizing in your kitchen really matters. I mean, especially if someone in your household has health conditions or a compromised immune system.

This is a situation where paper towel is absolutely the right call. So we're not ignoring food safety or making things any harder than they need to be for your health because that's not sustainable either. So the same goes for what I will just say is gross stuff, dog accidents, small child accidents, things you don't want to think too hard about in these moments, use what works. Nobody's getting bonus points for making a mess more eco-friendly.

It's fine. It's fine. And I just want to be really clear about this part. The goal here is reducing, not necessarily eliminating. This doesn't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. You just get to use your best judgment for how you live in your own home with your own needs and your own comfort level and your own constraints. So for usables cover most situations and you're still using paper towels sometimes. That's awesome. That still changes the overall picture.

This is about being thoughtful and not rigid and choosing the option that makes the most sense for you in the moment.

And another quick note on living situations, because this won't look the same for everyone. Not everyone owns their place. Some folks are dealing with coin laundry or shared laundry rooms or roommates or family members who are not on board. So again, this has to be sustainable for you, not just in theory, but in the actual context of your life. So if switching away from paper towels doesn't feel feasible right now because of laundry access or time or energy or costs, yeah, that's okay.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (21:57.046)
It doesn't mean that you're failing or the idea doesn't work. It's just not the moment. And if not everyone in your household is on board, that's okay too. That's what happened here. You don't need unanimous consent to start. You can just do what works for you. You grab the cloth when you're cleaning and grab a reusable when it makes sense and just let the rest unfold naturally. This leading by example still makes a difference. Even small changes, even partial changes will add up.

And often, once the people around you see that something works, that it's not harder or gross or more complicated, they usually try it too. The point isn't to convince everyone around you, it's just to make choices that fit your life and your capacity and let that be enough.

What about paper towels out in the world? So let's have a quick chat about what happens outside the house because this is often where disposables sneak back in. Obviously paper towels make sense in places like a public washroom. Fine. But one of the simplest habits I've kept for years is just carrying a cloth napkin in my bag. That's it, just one napkin. It can replace paper napkins when you're out. It can do a lot more than that. It can wrap up leftovers.

It can wipe hands or faces, catch a spill, get tied into a little bundle if you need to carry something quickly. It's one of those quiet multi-use things that ends up being more useful more often than you'd expect. And the same idea applies for like picnics or soccer games or day trips. All those in between moments where paper towels and napkins can show up by default, just have a couple of cloth ones on hand and it usually covers more than you think.

We also keep a couple in the glove box of our car along with some plastic forks because if there's a chip truck, we are stopping at it. But we have a couple of reusable on hand just to reduce. Again, sometimes disposables make sense, sometimes they don't. So do it works for you here and doesn't matter if it's perfect. It's just noticing how disposables are the default and realizing that that one cloth napkin can quietly replace a lot of them without too much extra effort.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (24:04.556)
And one last thing before we wrap up, because this comes up a lot too. If you have a big stash of paper towels right now, use them. We use what we have. There's no need to rush out and buy a bunch of reusables and get rid of your paper towels. There's definitely no need to feel bad about what's already in your house. The goal here isn't to create more waste in the name of reducing waste.

If you have more than you think you'll realistically use, like you're excited to get started, donating extras can be a really good option. Your local food pantry, shelters, schools, resettlement programs can almost always use basic household supplies like paper towels. So check them out. And I'll share this as an example. A few years ago, I did a brand collaboration for recycled paper towels and they sent me.

three huge boxes of paper towels, which is way more than I could ever use in a lifetime given my current habits. So we kept one package and donated the rest to the school down the street actually. And that felt like the most sensible thing to do in that situation. So out of the three in the pack, I think we're on rule two. So I feel good about that. So that's really the thread running through the whole episode. We're not flipping a switch. We're not doing everything at once. Just start where are.

and use what you have and let the habit shift over time.

So before I go, I want to leave you with this week's one small shift, something you can try without committing to anything bigger. And it's what I mentioned at first. Take the paper towel roll off your counter and put it somewhere else. Just put it under your sink or in a cupboard, anywhere that just makes it a little less automatic. And then notice what happens over the next week or two. Sometimes that pause, that little interruption is enough to change the habit all on its own. So that's it. We did it. The paper towel is sewed.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (26:01.47)
If you enjoy this episode, make sure you're following Sustainable in the Suburbs wherever you get your podcast and share this one with your friends. You can find more practical everyday sustainability ideas over at my blog at sustainableinthsuburbs.com. And all of the things that I mentioned today will be linked for you down in the show notes. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener. Thanks for tuning in to Sustainable in the Suburbs.

Every small step adds up and I'm so glad we're doing this together. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainable in the suburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on all the things. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener. This podcast is produced, mixed and edited by Cardinal Studio.

For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit www.cardinalsstudio.co or email Mike at mike at cardinalsstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.