Downsides To Disposable Hand Towels For Your Bathroom You Should Think About

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It's easy to get used to using paper towels for everything — the convenience of throwing them away after each use can't be beat, especially disposable hand towels. But the disposability is a downside when it comes to the environment and the extra hygiene isn't really necessary for residential bathrooms. So, you may want to figure out how to use few paper towels in your home.

One of the most popular disposable hand towels for home use are from the brand Kleenex, a giant in the paper product industry. The disposable hand towels are like a hybrid between regular tissue and thick paper towels — they come in a box, so you can easily grab one at a time, and they're sturdy and cloth-like. They are also supposedly a "cleaner way to dry hands" compared to cloth towels, (via Target). But at a few dollars per box, disposable hand towels are an ongoing investment, and each one eventually ends up in a landfill. While they can help reduce the spread of germs thanks to being a single-use item, that's an extra precaution that, according to many experts, doesn't make sense for day-to-day use for the general population. Here's what to consider before you buy a box.

Disposable towels are considered the most hygienic option for drying your hands in public bathrooms, in part because they dry your hands more quickly than hand dryers. In comparison to cloth towels, they also reduce the risk of cross-contamination if, for example, someone else uses the bathroom before you and doesn't wash their hands very well. That's why they are the recommended option for settings like hospitals, where germ management is essential. Washing your hands at home is a different matter. You aren't exposed to as many illness-causing germs as you would be in a health care setting, and there's not as much of a consensus on the best hand-drying practices. Many doctors say that exposure to some amount of germs is a daily reality, and that it's overkill to try to prevent them 100%. 

Even when someone in your household is sick, using extra-hygienic products like disposable towels won't prevent you from being exposed to those germs at some point. On the other hand, some doctors do advise using disposable products when someone is sick. As for the CDC, they simply advise to dry your hands with a clean towel or air dry (via CDC). The more important consideration is how often and thoroughly you wash your hands, as well as whether you practice other important hygiene like cleaning surfaces regularly. To ensure that your bathroom's hand towels are as hygienic as possible, consider assigning one towel to each person in the household, particularly when someone is sick. Wash them at least once every three days in hot water, and make sure the towels dry completely before you use them again.

There isn't much information on the environmental toll of disposable hand towels in particular, but we can look at paper towels as an example since the products are very similar aside from packaging. Both are made from wood pulp and water, and producing one ton of paper towels requires cutting down about 17 trees, accounting for millions of harvested trees each year. One roll consumes more than 10 liters of water, and the paper industry is one of the top consumers of energy worldwide. Most paper towels can't be recycled because they're considered contaminated, so hundreds of thousands of tons end up in landfills each day. 

Of course, few things in modern life are environmentally neutral. Cloth hand towels take their own toll. It takes a huge amount of water to produce one towel, for example, and each washing cycle consumes more water — they're about equal with paper towels in that respect. But high-quality cloth towels can be reused for years, and if you purchase enough upfront, you can minimize the frequency of washing. If you're interested in making your cloth towels more environmentally friendly, look for organic or recycled cotton, buy secondhand, or make your own with materials you already own. It also helps to learn how to properly wash your towels. Still interested in disposable hand towels but worried about the sustainability factor? Consider composting them instead of tossing them in the trash. It's safe to compost paper towels that have been used for regular hand drying, not those that have touched oil, grease, or cleaning products.