Pet Please #94: Half-Size Paper Towels

I'm glad this photo is now on my homepage instead of Miley Cyrus.
I’m glad this photo is now on my homepage instead of Miley Cyrus.

I don’t consider myself a granola conservationist, but due to the way my parents taught me and my siblings to respect the earth, I keep an eye on my impact on the environment. I turn off the light when I’m not in the room. I don’t flush the toilet every time I pee. I use canvas grocery bags, and I use cloth towels in the kitchen. I also make all of my clothes out of cat hair.

I deviate from my environmentally friendly upbringing in one key way: I use paper napkins. Growing up, we used cloth napkins every night. Now I keep a big roll of paper towels in the kitchen, and I tear off a piece every night to use with dinner.

Whenever I buy paper towels, I always end up with the big sheets. That’s the standard kind, right?

The thing is, I don’t need a sheet that big for my nightly napkin. So I end up tearing the big sheet in half.

I’m aware that the half-size sheets exist; I just always forget about that when I’m at the grocery store. Well, I remembered yesterday. So I wanted to take today to share my appreciation for the paper towel researcher who realized that some people only use half the towel and that we could waste a lot less paper by adding an extra perforation. Thank you, sir or ma’am. You will go on my Hall of Fame of everyday heroes along with the person who invented the wide-mouth beer can and the person who created self-foaming soap. I salute you.

5 thoughts on “Pet Please #94: Half-Size Paper Towels”

  1. I feel so much better commenting on this post opposed to the Miley Cyrus one! I basically have no words for that whole situation. I’ve just been praying for her to find her true self. I think she’s quite lost. That’s my opinion anyway.

    Anywho, I LOVE half-sheet paper towels. I’m always so mad when I don’t pay attention and get home and realize they’re whole sheet. I don’t need that much. No one does. Unless you have abnormally large sized hands I suppose. I also love foaming soap, I’ll never go back to liquid, it’s so much messier (ironically because it’s innately clean) than the foam. It’s so much easier for my son to wash his hands and actually get them clean! Which all parents can understand the toil and tribulation of! 🙂

    We’re also semi-environmentally conscious ourselves. We don’t drive hybrids or anything but we do pay to have our recycling picked up, lights off and whatever other small things we can do. We still use plastic bags when grocery shopping because we then reuse them as our trash bags. So I feel ok about that! But I did almost have a change of heart after watching this video about canvas bags…have a look! https://youtu.be/NvnYIxv_364

    Have you seen it before? 🙂

    Reply
    • I completely agree about paper towels! The full square is too much. You only need half.

      Recycling, I totally forgot to mention that. I do that too. It sounds like you’re putting the plastic bags to good use. I get them every now and then to clean the litter box, but I otherwise I use canvas bags. Not only are they better for the environment, but they’re easier to carry.

      Reply
  2. I feel this way about the person who decided to start selling half loaves of bread. I want to give them a huge hug, because they’ve saved me from the guilt of throwing out old bread, or the horror of trying to finish it before it goes bad. Five pieces of bread with dinner? Sounds like a great idea–let me go put my eating pants on!

    Reply

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