Are you still recycling?

[happystuff]

We still use paper napkins and paper towels but otherwise we're pretty much OK on the entire list. We even reuse the disposable utensils we get with takeout food.

I wonder about the cradle-to-grave carbon footprint of the creation of material that's suitable for cleanup at the end of its life (for example, old denim or polyester are not good for mopping up) and then repeatedly washing them (hot water, soap, heat and electricity for the laundry room) versus the footprint of another package of paper towels or napkins -- many of which become compost "drys" for us if they weren't used to mop up something greasy or toxic. Not taking a side; I just genuinely don't know which is greener across an entire life of a product.

Then there is the ever-increasing suspicion that checking off all of the items on the Rather than this list wouldn't save the planet an eensy-weensy fraction as much as, say, cleaning up combustion on one cargo ship engine for a year. Again, no hard numbers here. But it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that individuals like us are saving it with a teaspoon while industry and services are throwing it out with a shovel.

I sort of agree with you, Steve, but I still like to believe that all those teaspoons become tablespoon, which become cups to quarts to pints to gallons, etc. I also think that as people purchase less because they have longer-use items (i.e. cloth napkins versus paper napkins), this will effect the manufacturing and transportation. Who knows... maybe the collective *we* have actually already reduced the number of cargo ships because of our reduced use of throw-away items!

[NewGig]

Almost all the substitutions there we do. Except this one:

Paper towels/rags and cloths or repurposed newspaper sheets

I do BOTH.

Paper towels are used for fat clean out in pots & pans and goopy food waste. We saturate them rather than only using them for one thing, then they're put with the rest of the goopy food waste into a paper milk carton. (The cartons are stapled shut when full and taken to the dump. We do not have a garbage disposal.)

Paper towels are because we have our own septic system and accumulated fats are really hard on them, so we avoid putting fats down our drain as much as possible. I'd love to use rags, but it wouldn't solve the problem. Sometimes I use newspaper, but I drain things on a cookie rack, not paper towels. For years, I used newspaper when I was draining foods like bacon. It isn't that hard to add a small metal rack to a cooling pan and pick up the bacon, etc. and drain it. If you have to, put the rack over paper. But that doesn't clean out the fats in the pan.

I render some bacon fat and reuse it. But I don't reuse all our fats, just some beef, pork, chicken, and bacon fat. Beef or pork fat is mostly used when cooking the meat. I'll cut it off the meat and use it instead of other added fats for cooking the meat. I use the fat in hamburger the same way. I start the meat very low until there's a small skim of melted fat on the bottom of the pan, then I move the meat around, turn the heat up, and finish cooking.

I work pretty hard at either cooking food in/with the fat it comes with and we eat it. OR cooking the food in such a way that all the fats are in one place so they can be removed easily. The fat removal happens with paper towels.

I wash dishes with rags. If it was good enough for my grandma, why did I need a piece of plastic to wash dishes? I do laundry every day, a small load. The rags accumulate so that they need washing about 1x a week. We use flannel for the dishes, terry washcloths to clean counters, and other rags for everything else. I also use cloth placemats and napkins.