The San Francisco Chronicle had a blip this morning on cloth vs. paper napkins — which uses less water, emits less carbon and is better for the environment? Like many such comparisons, the answer isn’t easy, the paper writes:
Alas, a simple answer was elusive. A visit to AskPablo, a blog belonging to a sustainability engineer, Pablo Paster, who endeavors to analyze carbon footprints, uncovered a many-paragraph essay that concluded that a cloth napkin used 50 times as much water as and emitted more carbon dioxide (including its manufacture) than 50 paper napkins.
However, there are antique napkins that have been used many hundreds, even thousands of times …
If you are throwing a party, however, and want to use paper, look for recycled napkins - and be sure to put them in your green (composting) bin with the food scraps instead of with the landfill-bound trash or uncontaminated recycling.
The question reminds me of Sheryl Crow’s reported war on toilet paper. The singer says we can save resources and fight climate change one square at a time. Sounds tricky …
–John
