Superfluous: extra

I went to a swanky networking event last week empowering women to be more financially literate. It was hosted by Personal Capital at a very nice event space on the East River. So nice, that the paper towels in the ladies room became a topic of discussion for a hot minute among the women at the event.

These were by far the nicest hand towels I had ever seen. I almost didn't want to throw it away! They were thick, plush, personalized and definitely pricey. And, they were all in the trash. What else are you supposed to do with a paper towel, even the overtly fancy kind?

Maybe if I hadn't gotten bombarded in the ladies room by one of the tipsy event hosts, or a glass or two into the night myself, I would have stashed a few in my bag to test how long I could have used one paper towel before it finally gave way. But alas, living and learning.

Swanky. Can you feel it's thickness?

Swanky or not, paper towel waste is of real concern for us Trashers. Not only does it consume a tremendous amount of trees but it also plays into the larger water pollution problems associated with paper mills and takes up an immense amount of landfill space.

Now I'm sure everyone has seen these stickers at least once on a paper towel dispenser:

The blog claims to have reduced 29% of paper consumption since 2007. That's HUGE when you look at his other stats about how many fast food restaurants, coffee shops and restaurants there are in America. I mean, how many paper towels do YOU take when you dry your hands? What I like about the stickers is that it reminds us that our use is not the beginning of where the paper towels came from. Our consumption is such a habit that we don't think twice about the impact that habit is having.

An even better solution to paper towel waste can be found at one of the Brooklyn Starbucks:

"High speed energy efficient hand dryers are now being used instead of paper towels. 

One tone of paper consumes 17 trees, three cubic yards of landfill space and pollutes 20,000 gallons of water. 

I know it's blurry. There was a super long line for the bathroom and I didn't want to be "that girl" who stayed in forever even though everyone already heard me use the hand dryer. I really love and appreciate 2 things about this sticker over the "These Come from Trees" stickers. First, this approach is a much friendlier consumer side solution. While the "These come from Trees" stickers do a great job about serving as a personal reminder about where the paper towels come from... and guilt you momentarily into grabbing one instead of two towels ...you're still using paper towels. You're still cutting down trees for a single use item that will end up in landfill. However, the hand dryers remove the entire life cycle of a paper towel*. In the long run hand dryers are better for our environment and better for Starbucks bottom line.

Second, kudos to Starbucks for really making an effort to 'green up' their operation. They get a lot of slack for a lot of reasons, but they've recently been working on improving their massive ecological footprint and they deserve recognition for it.

*Now we can argue the LCA (life cycle analysis) of paper towels vs. high efficiency hand dryers till we are waist deep in sea level rise-- but this blog is about straight trash. So for the sake of a simplicity, I'm in the hand dryer's corner.

I think my biggest issue with the event spaces fancy paper towels is that I didn't even have an option for a hand dryer. It was either use the paper towel or go back to my networking event with soggy hands Oh, don't mind my hands- no they aren't sweaty, I just didn't want to use the unnecessarily fancy towels in the bathroom.