tagged w/ Paper Towels
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From Nude Gardening...
Get Rid of Your Paper Towels - The Paper Towel Challenge
Shawna on 03.18.11 at 3:58 PM
Paper towel Challenge.jpg
Shawna Coronado standing next to her kitchen counter where she keeps the folded towels she uses to substitute for paper towels. It works great!
My goal for 2010 was to get rid of the paper towels in my family's life for the entire year. As of this weekend I have done it - I survived the Paper Towel Challenge with no paper towels for one whole year. HOORAY!!!
In doing research, I found that most paper towels are manufactured using chlorine (to bleach them white), which releases carcinogenic furans and dioxins into the environment. Shockingly, almost 3,000 tons of paper towels are sent to landfills EACH DAY!
Over 540,000 trees could be saved each year if every household in America would use just one less average roll of virgin fiber paper towels. Using post-consumer recycled paper if you ARE going to use a paper towel is much wiser because Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year. We need to find a sustainable solution that stops this astounding waste.
If your household uses at least one roll of paper towels per week you could save at least $100 per year or more by switching to dishcloths and tea towels. It seems like the switch is common sense.
For me the Paper Towel Challenge was not easy at first. I am a bit of a germ-o-phobe and prefer to "throw away" the germy paper towels rather than wash them myself. Guess what? You can wash a cloth rag or towel with soap and water and it kills the germs just fine. It became easy to use and reuse the towels once I got in the habit.
Above you see a photo of me, championship non-paper-towel-user with the cotton cloth towels I use as a substitute for paper towels. I keep them folded and on the counter next to my coffee pot at all times. I wash them once a week in hot, soapy water in my clothes washer. Easy-peasy.
If I can make this switch, so can you. Help save yourself money and make a difference for the environment. Try the Paper Towel Challenge: one year, no paper towels! I bet you can become a reduce, reuse, and recycle champion too!!From Nude Gardening...
Get Rid of Your Paper Towels - The Paper Towel Challenge... more
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You know Isle Grande Terre, Louisiana, from the unbelievable pictures of oiled birds taken there last week. It's also the island just to the east of Grand Isle, which I've been reporting on since oil made landfall there several weeks ago. I wanted to check up on Grande Terre, and so to get there, and avoid a BP escort, yesterday I got in a kayak with my intrepid former literature professor from the University of New Orleans and paddler extraordinaire, Dr. John Hazlett.
On the way, we beached ourselves on an uninhabited spit near Grand Isle State Park. It was completely covered in oil, and there were no cleanup crews in sight.
After a while, a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries employee trailing half a dozen big & tall men behind her appeared. She flagged us down and told us nobody should be walking on that beach because it was a wildlife reserve. Which, considering the amount of oil (massive) and level of cleanup taking place (none), was pretty alarming. Plus, as a big guy next to her wearing a shirt from ES&H, the main cleanup contractor here, said, "We don't need this on camera." Which is why BP's contractors have their workers on a gag order: because sometimes they say stupid shit like that.
We paddled on and pulled up on Grande Terre, where the oil stretched as far as we could see in deep dark pools. We encountered a cleanup crew supervisor gunning around on his ATV, who said there were all of 30 workers on the whole island, which he said is five miles long. For the hour we walked around, only three of them were working anyway, while the rest sat in the shade. And the work consisted of somewhat haphazardly laying down paper towels.
That was about all we could take, what with a heat index of 105 and the rowing we had to do back to Grand Isle and I was already getting a little woozy. At least I kept my wits enough about me to remember to keep my mouth closed when waves splashed water thick with oil into my face. I suppose the 60 or so dolphins swimming the pass with us don't have that option; things got a little (more) depressing in the kayak when we saw that they were blowing it out through their holes. They'd probably like to take the double scrubbing-down with dishwashing liquid we took when we got home, too.You know Isle Grande Terre, Louisiana, from the unbelievable pictures of oiled birds... more
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Admit it - you've been tinkling away and then reached for the roll to realize you're stuck without tp. What's a girl to do? Where do you turn?Admit it - you've been tinkling away and then reached for the roll to realize... more
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An Eagan principal who allegedly made a kindergartner clear out a school toilet bowl bare-handed will be fired if the district's school board has its way, his attorney said Monday.
Rahn Elementary School Principal Doug Steele offered his side of the story through attorney Roger Aronson, saying that the toilet contained only water and paper towels and that he simply had the 6-year-old boy remove the towels and put them in a wastebasket.
Steele, who is entitled to a hearing, asked for one on Friday as part of a disciplinary process that can typically take two or three months, Aronson said.
The principal was put on paid leave from his job in December after the boy's parents said he made their son remove paper towels the boy had dropped into the toilet.
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The boy told them that the trouble started when he used a single-occupancy bathroom in his classroom and wiped himself with paper towels, accidentally causing the toilet to clog, his parents said.
When the boy's teacher found out, she called the principal, they said.
Aronson said Steele says that the toilet contained nothing but paper towels and water, and that it's unclear whether it was even clogged. "I can tell you that 6-year-olds have trouble remembering what they had for lunch yesterday, that they're highly suggestible," Aronson said. "We may never know what the real story was."
...An Eagan principal who allegedly made a kindergartner clear out a school toilet bowl... more
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"I feel sorry for all those women who have to clean up gross spills in the first place.""I feel sorry for all those women who have to clean up gross spills in the first... more
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