We have two types of paper towel in our office. Â One is the half-way environmentally friendly recycled brown stuff. Â The stuff that, in a pinch, you use as facial tissue that leaves you permanently scarred and disfigured in the nasal regions. Â It is unpeforated and so one must tear it where destiny selects. Â This is paper towel that I can get alongside, despite all of its shortcomings. Â It gives you the most usability for cost. Â The other type seems to be fairly common.Type two paper towel is light and fluffy. Â It lacks the industrial grunge-y charm of the type one items. Â It will have patterns ‘quilted’ into it. Â It is often white or near enough as makes no useable difference. Â It is highly absorbent and will, if used properly, give a reasonably streakless shine to mirrors and chrome. Â It’s good for putting under bacon to soak up excess grease. Â This is the non-friendly, planet killer paper towel from the past.
My biggest beef with type two? Â The sheet size.
Bounty, in their wisdom, came up with something called ‘Select-A-Size’ several years ago. Â Apparently, paper towel sheets were simply too big. Â People don’t really need a full sheet for most jobs and tearing the sheets up is just annoying. Â Their solution to this presumed quandary was to reduce the sheet size. Â Not to a half sheet. Â Oh, no. Â That would have been too closely in line with the 10% of users who didn’t require a full sheet. Â They reduced the size of the sheet to two-thirds. Â Two-thirds of a sheet of paper towel is meeting no-one’s needs. Â It is too large for the half-sheet uses but it is too small for any other use. Â Things like soaking up bacon fat are perfect single sheet uses. Â Two of these two-thirds sheets is far too much and is wasteful.
All of the paper towel manufacturers seem to have gone to this system, now. Â I don’t think it is possible to purchase the old style of paper towels. Â The ones I miss. Â The ones that were useful and didn’t require me to repurchase them quite so oft-
Very clever, Bounty. Â Very clever.