How to Use Fewer Paper Napkins

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By Vikki Albers
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There are Green ideas everywhere we look! My friend Audrey knows a family with a few children who have almost completely stopped using paper napkins. This is one of the sweetest Green ideas I’ve ever heard! You will love it.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Dish towels, hand towels, cloth napkins
Cardboard tubing
Crayons, markers, ribbon

Step 1

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We want to be Greener whenever possible and using fewer paper napkins makes a noticeable contribution to this effort. Using fewer paper napkins saves trees, reduces the energy to prep the trees to become paper (as fewer of us use them), and reduces the paper napkin-making-packaging-distributing process itself. This idea cuts back on landfill waste – paper napkins cannot be recycled so account for a great deal of it. If you are already using cloth napkins, this will cut down on the laundry you do keeping them clean. I know, I know... very cool. Keep reading!
Step 2

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Here is what this family does: On a weekly basis each person uses one dish-towel and a napkin ring. This is their ‘napkin’ for the week. At the end of every meal everyone at the table pulls their dish-towel through the napkin ring; these are stored until the next meal and used again. At the end of the week, all are laundered. Voila!
Step 3

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Yes – you have questions? Why a dish-towel? Because of the size, more corners to use over a longer period of time. A cloth napkin could work as well – a larger size for younger people and something a little smaller for more mature family members. An idea I like about a dish-towel, or even a hand-towel is that you might use a towel with a sports-team logo on it, or a Muppet, or something that reads ‘Kiss the Cook’ – this is a Green idea and not without levity.
Step 4

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What if someone in the house is ill? Coughing, sneezing, or worse. Abandon the plan for the duration of under-the-weather days. Maybe use paper napkins and toss them after meals. You could use cloth napkins but that increases laundry energy. It’s your call. We want our lifestyles to be Green, not our faces – keep illness from other household members.
Step 5

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It’s summertime and you eat sticky, finger-lickin’-good BBQ ribs every other night? With whatever we do in life, be it change our napkin habits or ride our bicycles to work, we want to be flexible. We want to implement these changes whenever possible but there will be exceptions. Do you use cloth napkins most of the time and more than you did a year ago? Good for us! Do you ride your bicycle to work most often and far more frequently than a year ago? Good for us! We are conscious and turn to Green whenever possible. We encourage not discourage.
Step 6

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I have had a week to think about this idea and have come up with a few thoughts of my own. Because this is a family effort wouldn’t it be fun to make personalized napkin rings out of items you have at home. Rings could be cut from cardboard paper towel tubes (if you have stopped using paper towels, use a tube from a toilet paper roll). Cut the cylinders two inches long and then decorate them with crayons and markers. Please stay away from gluing on beads, sequins, and glitter – those items are too small to be near food being ingested.
Step 7

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Because longevity is not a characteristic of cardboard, napkin rings may need to be re-made on a monthly basis and decorated appropriately. Lets draw shamrocks for March, celebrate a Yankee Doodle Dandy theme in July (emphasis on ‘Doodle’ of course), and beautiful snowflakes in December. Tie a ribbon through the ring of the person who ate all their veggies or for the one celebrating a birthday this month.
Step 8

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Try this idea on. See if it fits your family. It could be fun, besides you look Mahvelous in Green, Dahling!