Going paperless: progress report
You might have heard that Greenpeace has successfully made Kimberly-Clark (the Kleenex company) get their supply chain switched to sustainable forest sources. You can read Greenpeace’s info on the end of the Kleercut campaign at their site.
I think this is great, but it’s not going to stop me from trying to reduce the amount of paper I use. It takes a lot of time, energy and water to make paper, even if the trees are from a certified forest. So I still think it’s a good idea to limit the amount that needs to be made.
Besides, Gunns in Australia is more of a problem than Kimberly-Clark – they’re quite happy to log old-growth native forests that belong to the public, and send them off to be pulped and turned into office paper. I won’t be supporting that anytime soon!
You might like this YouTube video on The Secret Life of Paper, which I saw over at Tiny Choices. It sums up my thinking on the issue very well:
What I’ve been doing lately:
- switched to email/online billing for my mobile phone bill
- signed up when my local council asked for people who’d like to get their rates bills online
- done the same with our electricity company, who are introducing paperless billing in September
- let another magazine subscription lapse instead of renewing it
What I’m still looking for:
- recycled paper towels. I have reuseable cloths for wiping up in the kitchen, but every now and then paper is just better than cloth. But I can’t seem to find a brand that has any recycled content (let me know if you’ve got any recommendations)
- more hankies, now that the cold and flu season has arrived
Unfortunately, I’ve also had an increase in the amount of junk mail we’re getting. We’ve got a “No Junk Mail” sticker on the letterbox, but I think we must have a new delivery person or company who don’t know they have to respect that. So I’ll have to find out who they are and make a complaint.
Altogether, I think I’m making slow but steady progress on reducing the amount of paper I use. I’ll be keeping up the effort, because I still seem to be getting too many bills 
8 Comments
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Hallo,
I have been meaning to write something since I read your blog about tissues and hankies etc. I shop at Woolworths (in Tas) and can get recycled paper toilet paper (office paper), tissues and paper towel there….. I haven’t got tissues or paper towel right now but I think the brand is “Natural”…. It will be a couple of weeks until I venture back to a supermarket but will check then if you haven’t had any luck by then!
We have a pile of cloths for floor spills (of which there are many with a baby around) that we just soak and wash when there are enough. If I really cant be bothered getting a cloth, I use toilet paper! If you need the paper towel for cooking purposes, I think a tea towel will usually do the trick?
Back on the hankies thing, is it still the right thing to do to use them when you have a household of people with colds, or should we switch to paper tissues then do you think?
The other thing I did to save on using more plastic than we need to, was getting a rack for drying plastic bags. Well, actually its for rubber gloves! It means we can wash zip lock bags or bread bags (that are great for freezing in sometimes among other things) and then make sure they dry properly ready for second, plus use.
My big question though is what do you use to line the rubbish bin? I used to use all the old plastic shopping bags. What did they do before plastic bags?
Hi Tamsin – I usually bust out the paper towel when I have to grease a cake tin, which is like once every couple of months, so one roll lasts me forever. Thanks for the brand recommendation, I’ll keep an eye out for it.
As for tissues vs hankies when everyone’s got a cold, it really depends on how many people live in your house and how bad the colds are
We’ve just got the two of us here with hankies, if we had kids as well I might feel differently. I wish there were more recycled paper tissues available, then it wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
I like your bag rack idea! We use plastic bin liners, but I’ve heard of people using newspaper. There are biodegradable bin bags out there, and some people who are very good with their composting and recycling find that they hardly need a bin bag at all, since their wet waste is all for compost, & the rest is in the recycling. I’m not that good at it yet, but maybe one day!
Why don’t you hang onto your butter wrappers or the paper insert that comes in margarine for greasing cake tins? My grandmother used to do that and I find myself doing it too! I like the idea of getting the compost to the level where we don’t have to line the rubbish at all. We aren’t quite there yet though!
That is an absolutely great idea. I wonder how long they’ll keep? Probably a while if I chuck them in an airtight container in the fridge. I’ll start experimenting!
Julie, even longer if you pop them in an airtight container in the freezer – and they only take a few mins to defrost because there’s not much actually frozen.
You could try these guys for paper towels, although I have a feeling they may only sell in bulk http://envirocanerecycledpaperproducts.street-directory.com.au/
And naturale make one – which is the one I buy – http://www.arf.net.au/naturale/environment.html – there’s an email on their website, suggest dropping them a line and asking who in your area stocks them
Oh, and op shops usually have heaps of hankies – I just give them a good soak in nappy wash to get rid of any ickies.
Cheers, that’s really helpful info. Our usual supermarket gets the Naturale toilet paper, shouldn’t be a problem for them to stock the towels as well you’d think.
np – what you want to tell them is that is an item you would *specifically* come into their store for – apparently that’s the magic that makes them willing to stock it.