Paper towel or handkerchief?
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
hi all,
in the web-pages on kind acts, i saw somewhere written that to not harm environment is a kind act.
is this an exaggeration of kindness as kindness might only apply to living sentient beings - or - does this makes sense to apply kindness towards insentient thing like environment? helping the environment to be safe helps us to survive - this is ok, but does not harming to environment can be considered an act of kindness?
i was using the paper towel in restrooms quite casually till recently when very few days back i read about not harming to environment is a kind act. so now i try to use handkerchief to dry the wet hands, after washing in wash-basin, or even after washing my face in wash-basin. though using handkerchief is slightly uncomfortable in office, as when the handkerchief gets wet, it is uncomfortable to put a wet handkerchief in pants 
, so thought of asking you all is there any benefit in not using paper towel or not - if there is no benefit in not using paper towel, i can happily go back to my habit of using paper towel in restrooms.
so do you all use paper towel or handkerchief in restrooms?
i do not have information regarding how the paper towel is made - whether is it recycled from paper itself or using pulp from trees.
so the question is - does not using paper towel in restrooms help save trees on earth or help environment in any way? any information please. thanks in advance.
Comments
Re-cycled content paper towels are pretty common today. Still, to be sure, you will want to speak with your office building facilities staff. Either way, there is most often a carbon emission from the energy used to manufacture products even if the material used is re-cycled. Also there is the issue of trash disposal; those paper towels go from the trash can to a landfill, where they take up space and again there is a carbon emission from the equipment used haul the trash and to operate the landfill.
Perhaps instead of putting your wet handkerchief back in you pocket you could bring a couple of extras to work with you at the beginning of the week. You could keep them in your office to bring into the restroom with you like small hand towels. Perhaps there is discrete location, maybe under your desk, where you could let them air dry between uses.
Paper towels or hand dryers always have some impact on the environment.
I like your strategy of using a handkerchief. Maybe a small plastic bag would work to stuff it in your pocket until you can take it out to dry somewhere.
You've given me something to think about @misecmisc1
That's what I would do -- find a spot where I can hang the handkerchief or towel -- bring in 2 to 4 of them to rotate their use. I think that's a good idea. To be honest, I really miss those old-fashioned towels in a machine that just loops around and you pull it out to a dry spot. They were cool.
actually what i do is - when the handkerchief is very less wet, then i can fold it so that the dryer part is on the outside and the wet part is in the inside. but when suppose i wash my face and then i wipe it with my handkerchief, then it becomes too wet, so what i do is momentarily i fold it and keep it in my pocket, then after i come back to my desk, i spread it horizontally with some area on the edge of the desk and leave the remaining area falling down vertically to ground and since the desk is having the edge like in table, so there is some space in which the handkerchief can move, even though very little, but since it is summer here in india and in our office air-conditioners are running on full capacity to cool the office rooms, so i think that usually within 20 to 30 minutes, the handkerchief becomes dry. but sometimes it feels odd to me to let my handkerchief dry on my office desk and sometimes this feeling comes to me that what other colleagues would be thinking of me, when they see me drying my handkerchief like that on office desk.
But the other question still remains - is not harming the environment really a kind act or just an exaggeration of kindness? any ideas here, please. thanks in advance.
It's a small kindness when you think about it, there are major corporations who are offending our environment 24/7 - but with the thoughtfulness that many of us give to these seemingly small kindnesses - what I'm trying to say here, is that it's the thought that counts and not always and not necessarily the act.
I think choices that we make as humans definitely can be seen as kindness towards the rest of the ecosystem.
Much of modern life is dependent on fossil fuel extraction and habitat destruction, if we make choices to limit our contribution to the impact, then we are showing kindness to the plants and animals that depend on a healthy environment.
...does not harming to environment can be considered an act of kindness?
-On a related note, as we all breath the ame air and drink the same water, it seems to me being mindful of our impact on the environment is the considerate thing to do...
Doesn't this scenario take the fact that we are not separate from the environment for granted?
On a side note, the handkerchief isn't a bad idea but I generally don't use public washrooms for number 2. When I use them to pee, I touch nothing except my own business.
I use the toilet paper, paper toilet seat cover AND the paper towels. Maybe it's a woman thing...hahaha....
At home, I use much less paper products for the exact kindness that you speak of...but in a building with a couple thousand people...forget it. I need to use all the paper barriers I can..hahahaha..Like I said, maybe a woman thing...
I think when you consider the vast amount of trash on our planet, and floating in our oceans, that yes, absolutely it is kind to help the environment however you can. the impact may seen tiny, but when you think of how much paper towel you have used in say the past year (or your whole life) not contributing any more of that to the garbage on the planet is a big deal. If you can reduce your plastics usage, that is ideal. Plastic is clogging our planet and killing thousands (or more) of animals per year.
Yeah, I haven't seen one of those in years. Probably in an age where people are into antibacterial soap for routine use they are not considered sufficiently hygienic. About as green as it gets though..
@Karasti
Not to minimize maintaining the smallest footprint possible, but all of this really comes from a runaway build up the human population that requires all other species to step aside for.
Primitive life survived on early earth for a very long time before oxygen and nitrogen existed in anything more than trace amounts. With the evolution of oxygen producing life, almost all of the dominant anaerobic life that preceded it, eventually perished from the production of oxygen.
What we presently call life producing, was actually at one time, yesterdays pollution.
I wonder how far into the earths future we will need to look to find the next alpha form of life, thriving and depending on what we are presently calling our pollutions.
As for the paper towel or handkerchief...The last person who told me of their choice in this regard, did so while ordering foods which cause vastly greater forms of wastage, when other options were available.
I liked those things too @silver ,and you don't see them much anymore, like you say @Kenneth ,they are probably considered unhygienic. Most hand dryers take ages to dry your hands, although some of the new designs are getting better. I don't really like paper towel dispensers either. The motion sensor fed styles are a real pain, and the old style ones get jammed up, and half the time you see just a stack of paper towels stacked on top of the thing and you have to try and just grab one or two with your wet hands...arrgh!
If you clean yourself everyday and pay particular attention to the groin area, especially the backdoor where faecal bacteria propagate, it is unlikely that you will 'need' to wash your hands after a number 1 - in the sense that urine is sterile and the surrounding area shouldn't be any more saturated in bacteria than other, more innocuous conditions.
As a third option to paper or handkerchief, you could also try natural air drying - shake off the excess water and wait for a surprisingly short period of time and the water droplets will evaporate, stimulated to do so by surrounding exothermic conditions and also by the operation of air currents that facilitate the transfer of energy for evaporation.
It takes patience and is carbon neutral.
^^^ only on NewBuddhist do we learn how to wipe our own asses.
Such compassion!
More and more public conveniences are reverting to disposable paper towels, because the hot-air driers are unpopular, and furthermore spread bacteria apparently....
My mum made us a roller towel for the kitchen.
She cut a towel in half lengthways, hemmed the two cut edges, then sewed them together to make a long loop.... my brother made a wall-mounted roller with two pieces of flat pine as end brackets, and a piece of broom handle as the roller... It didn't have a full-width back-plate, (as illustrated) but they're easy to put together....
Oh wow, @Federica, that does jog a memory -- at some point -- maybe we always had it -- the same towel roller in the kitchen - not sure if dear ol' granny made the towel or not. We may have bought this delightful gadget with our Green Stamps!
ROFLMAO .... LOLOLOLOL... I'm through with you the rest of today....You are crazay!!
Talk about jogging memories, my mom used to collect these. When she got a kitchen drawer full, she would go get the redemption books and set us kids to work pasting the stamps.
They're thinking of bringing 'Green Shield Stamps' back, in the UK....
Yes! It was a regular thing in our household -- tons of those books to cash in on those goodies in the green stamp store.
If you are out in a public restroom, from a hygienic standpoint it is better to use a fresh paper towel after washing hands. The reason for that is the rubbing of freshly washed hands on dry paper towel is the 'second step' in removing bacteria et all from your hands.
If you use a handkerchief over and over again, it will build up a bit of bacterial life. It will go 'damply' back into your pocket, creating a nice warm primordial earth-like condition, and encourage the bacteria you rubbed off to breeeeeeed
If all we had to use to dry hands were disposable baby diapers, for instance, I would be troubled by their buildup in a landfill. But a paper towel? A millimeter or two of wood pulp ought to decompose nicely and provide some useful carbon and 'sugar' molecules for a raft of creatures that live off of those sorts of things.
The only reason this occurs to me is cuz I'm a nurse and they are ALL OVER US about handwashing between patients (as should be). Sorry in case this sounds pedantic
All paper towels and tissues go in the compost bin on the kitchen counter along with food scraps. Paper comes from wood, and rots just fine.
I use square miles of paper towel on the boat and at home.
If oil or fat accumulates in a septic field it can clog it up pretty quick. Better to wipe it away from dishes before washing them.
On the boat it's more convenient. It can go in the water without causing harm.
The two main hells our local Water provider/Authorities face, with regard to filtration, and purification of domestic water supplies are: cooking fats, and q-tip cotton buds.
).
Not tissues, not face wipes, not loo paper, or ladies' sanitary products (sorry, gentlemen
Fats and q-tip cotton buds.
So dispose of those mindfully. They can pretty much deal quite well with the remainder....
hi all,
i found an interesting link, so thought of sharing with you all:
http://themindunleashed.org/2015/07/you-can-live-without-producing-trash-and-this-is-how.html
To wash your things, people (well, mostly) use water back home. When I first come to uk, I wonder why people are not washing theirs and just use the paper. I was thinking the smell might be still there.
And how come poeple in developed worlds talk about hygiene a lot and not using water in the toilettes. 
I do know Italy uses water in some places.