I never had the need for kitchen paper towels. But when I arrived to the serviced apartment that I got for some time when I moved to Munich, two rolls of paper towels were prepared in the kitchen. I started using them as napkins, later I moved on to using them to dry my hands, and finally I ended using them even as a dish replacement for, e.g., bread. I became addicted. It was so convenient! No need to clean anything, just throw them away after use. I wanted to believe that it was no big harm for the environment. After all, it was not evil plastic what I was throwing away, but just paper, right?

Regarding evil plastic, I am a big fan of these glass jars that get fully reused :)

But obviously, those paper towels come from somewhere and go somewhere. Most likely, from trees to landfill waste. My Zero Waste book kept insisting that one should move away from such one use items, but the convenience made me fabricate arguments why it was not that bad. In the end, a virus had to come to teach me the lesson. One day, the supermarket was out of paper towels, as people were probably buying them as a replacement for toilet paper. I had to do without, and that seemed impossible. But once I had no other choice, it was not. As is often the case, change was just a matter of a slightly different perspective.

The last page of "Zero Waste Home" - To have or to be?