paper towels

our paper towels are made from 90% recycled content, 40% of which comes from post-consumer waste — that means a lot of trees are left untouched!

Americans buy a lot of paper towels — almost as much as every other country in the world combined¹. Unfortunately, this demand for paper towels has caused the destruction of millions of acres of ancient forests². These forests suck in and store carbon dioxide³ — a process that helps fight global warming. Manufacturing disposable towels out of virgin paper is a very wasteful process, and we want to minimize the damage with a smarter approach to our paper towels and how they are made.

close the performance gap

Current recycling technology is not yet able to match the performance of pure virgin paper towels. In order to make switching to recycled an easy choice, we’ve boosted performance by engineering a recycled paper towel that comes much closer to the experience offered by non-recycled brands. In addition to improving the key features of absorbency and strength, we’ve focused on the details. Although our towels are denser and stronger, we’ve fine-tuned the perforations to be just right for an easy one-handed tear on our paper towel holders. We even made the cardboard tube in the center stiffer so it won’t bend and press against the towel holder — that would prevent the roll from spinning just right. And we designed the jumbo rolls to have the highest possible sheet count to fit neatly on the wide base of our tension arm paper towel holder.

shredded paper and hand using simplehuman paper towel

higher performance makes it easier to be eco-friendly

With a towel that performs almost as well as non-recycled brands, switching to using recycled paper towels is a no-brainer. simplehuman paper towels are made from 90% recycled content – at least 40% of our recycled paper comes from offices and other post-consumer waste. The remaining recycled content comes from mill cuttings and other pre-consumer recycling streams. That means a lot of trees are left untouched! And the manufacturing of our towels is also much less wasteful. Every time you use one of our rolls, you help save 6.8 pounds of CO2 and 8 gallons of water compared to a roll of non-recycled paper towels⁴.