Here at Eco Hair and Beauty we currently give free workshops to colleges and training facilities in eco-friendly and sustainable behaviour that can be implemented in any salon. We recommend using single use/disposable towels instead of standard towels. During our workshops a lot of you have asked what makes single use towels eco friendly. Let’s answer that question!
- –> The energy used in the whole life cycle [of a single use towel] is less than the energy used by your washing machine to clean one single cotton towel – in fact it is only 10% of that energy and water combined.
They bio-degrade in 6 weeks and degrade completely within 8 days in a typical sewage farm.
Single use towels are made from 100% regenerated cellulose fibre. Cellulose is the natural polymer that forms part of the living cells of all vegetation. It is the most abundant and renewable biopolymer on Earth.
In composting tests, Scrummi towels were found to have degraded completely after 6 weeks in a static aerated compost pile, while cotton fibre suffered a weight loss of approximately 80%.
Under the same conditions, polyester, polypropylene and polythene showed very little signs of degradation.(Scrummi – Eco-Friendly Single Use Salon Towels)
Furthermore the plants are sustainably grown and all transport is ‘completed by low-carbon and carbon neutral methods’. Single use towels are biodegradable, can be recycled, incinerated, land filled or digested in sewage.
When you consider the amount of water and energy used to wash standard towels (large loads, high volume of loads, high temperatures) and compare it not just to how much money/time/energy/water you can save but also the environmental impact…there’s no competition!
Click here to try a ‘Cost Saving Calculator’ and see how making the change to single use towels can save you money!
Here are some examples of single use/disposable towels:
http://www.easydry.com
http://simplydry.co.uk
