Paper towel, c-fold

Producers of paper towels often claim that they are using 100% recycled paper, but that is bogus. What they mean is that they use paper fibers that are not used in any other product, and would be thrown away. In reality, paper towels contain in average 50% of post-consumer recycled paper, that is, paper which really was used and recycled. Which is very nice anyway.

A single paper towel used to dry hands in airport bathrooms weight about 3 grams, or about 1/10 of an ounce.

Unfortunately, paper towels do not get recycled themselves. They go mostly into landfills, even though some cities (such as San Francisco, CA) are starting programs for composting used paper towels. Right now the percentage of such re-use is negligible, but if this trend continues, we will update the pollution section of this article. In the meantime, as reported by Discovery.com, just in the USA 3000 tons of paper towels are thrown away every day.