Cloth in the Kitchen: Sustainable Living at Home Series

Our love affair with paper is coming to a close in the kitchen. The Sustainable Living at Home series will focus on issues of the home from table settings to disposing of hazardous cleaning products. We will be kicking off the series with where the magic happens, the kitchen. Kitchens host a great many functions, as well as produce a great deal of waste,  recyclable  goods, and compost. During the Age of Convenience (perceived convenience that is), our kitchens traded cloth napkins, table cloths, and towels for their paper counterparts. Now its time to spice up our kitchens once again with beautiful fabrics, this time hopefully for the long-run.

Some consumers may consider paper napkins, towels, and table cloths to be compostable and therefore think they create a  negligible  amount of waste. An interesting thought, seeing as the majority of paper products are bleached with chlorine and are heavily processed to keep them crisp and white. Although the majority of kitchen paper products can be composted, unbleached and natural paper products are healthier for your compost and the soil. So there is an additional price to pay either by selecting the more sustainable brand of paper products, or by adding chlorine to your compost.

The more toxic side of paper products happens before we even meet them at the store. Part of creating a healthy home for sustainable living is about looking at the full cycle of the goods it contains. For paper, the processing and manufacturing portion can be quite toxic and resource-intensive. First, the majority of paper products on the market are not made from post-consumer waste, meaning new trees are harvested, transported, processed and then created into one-time use paper products. Secondly, paper processing requires an intensive amount of toxic chemicals. The paper industry has a very dark environmental history when it comes to toxic wastewater and byproducts being disposed of illegally or unethically. Some rivers and watersheds have been declared toxic due to this supply chain. So the resources used to create paper products may not justify the products one-time use.

An easy way to stay true to sustainable living at home and in the kitchen is to invest in beautiful cloth alternatives. From solid colors to designer patterns, cloth napkins, towels, and tablecloths are back in style and here to stay (we hope). Look for organic, local, and/or fair-trade cotton or hemp products to add to your kitchen. The cloth alternatives make great gifts, add color to a room, and can bring out some of your personality. For awhile a lot of 'natural' products were well...natural looking. Now they have come into their own when it comes to design, so you can find bold colors, gorgeous patterns, and some neutral tones as well. This is an easy addition to any kitchen that can save resources, time, and money! Best of all, you get to bring napkin rings back into style.

Photo Credit: Re-Nest.

This is the first article in the Sustainable Living at Home Series. Please check the Ethical Consumption News section on Justmeans for the newest addition to the series.