The first time I saw an ad for these, I thought the same as you did. What a complete waste.

Absolute FAIL!!! I really hate the idea that such a product is being advertised.

Is it me or is the first pic somehow strange? where is the hand coming from? is it attached to someone or is it just floating around in this room? or is the model kneeling in front of the shitty towel-dispenser? funny...

You might not want to use these, but that doesn't mean that they won't legitimately serve someone's need, somewhere. Cloth towels can get pretty grungy, and washing them frequently means that someone (usually the woman of the house) has to spend yet more time doing laundry. This waste of her time might mean more to her than the waste of paper, especially if she doesn't have ready access to laundry facilities. Also, fewer laundry loads means less use of water, soap, and electricity, so the environmental cost of disposable towels is partially offset by that.

Imagine a largish family where a bathroom is shared by everyone and someone has the flu. Mightn't they appreciate the disposable towels that help prevent the flu from spreading throughout the house? Imagine a person who entertains a lot and throws large parties. Mightn't guests prefer their own, sanitary, hand towel over sharing with another dozen people? I keep (fancy) paper hand towels in the powder room for this reason.

I've kept a roll of paper towels hanging from the shelf over the toilet tank (paper towels are not flushable) for years. While not used constantly, over time it's been very useful. Visitors seem to prefer it to a hand towel. I've been to dinner parties where the guest hand towels were disposable paper ones.

I don't use these on a regular basis, but when I have a large group of people over, I put them out. I think it's courteous to provide this as an option in addition to cloth towels. If every guest uses the same cloth hand towel, it can get pretty damp (and in my mind, gross) by the end of the evening.

Hate. So very very wasteful. I understand the germ thing, I do, but I feel like, if you're using the towel dry your CLEAN hands and you change it out fairly often you're probably fine. I mean, yeah, if you're using it to wipe down the bathroom and then rehanging it, you're going to have an issue, but that's just common sense, isn't it?

Folks must have some pretty dirty house guests! I wash my hands before I touch the towel...so I am thinking it stays fairly clean. If you have an mob over (what--like 6 times a year?) I can see the value in having some paper towels or a pile of cloth towels on hand. And, this product, looks-wise: hideous.

Also, after reading other's comments: a) even several hand towels are never going to hugely affect your laundry load, certainly not if you take into account that a "large family" would have an equally large load of towels to wash already. So really, it worries me to see us trying to justify the convenience v. waste issue... isn't that a major step back?!

And b) it seems like a lot of folks are making the argument for using these occasionally for company but that is most certainly NOT how they've been marketed. Kleenex is marketing them as an absolute replacement for everyday, NOT just special occasions...

I think this product has it's place. My husband often has dirty greasy hands and comes inside to quickly wash his hands before he resumed whatever he does under the hood. He usually just rinses of the gunk rather than actually scrubbing his hands since he is just going back to doing the same thing... I don't know how many white towels we have gone through. I have a roll of shop towels (heavy papertowel that is more like cloth) that he can use and throw out. I am assuming the kleenex ones are similar. Would I use them to replace my bathroom towels completely; not likely.

When I have large parties, I put out a basket of cloth towels and I, MYSELF, go into the bathroom and remove the damp towels, tossing them into the laundry.
My mom did the same thing when I was growing up.

Hate this! I saw this in Target for the first time and cringed! I keep quite a few cloth towels around and switch them out pretty regulary while I wash the dirty ones and I haven't had any issues. This is just wasteful and while I hate to be so negative, I hope this product doesn't catch on.

@delilah2: I cut flowers from my garden... I'm pretty sure that's not exactly an "environmental nightmare". And while I get that it can be frustrating, isn't any step in the right direction a good one?

with water becoming scarcer worldwide, washing clothing as often as we do may become impossible.

Absolutely--aesthetics, sanitation, labor-saving, and environmentalism all factor into this. There's the diaper issue, and I read that until relatively recently women even in developed countries laundered and reused their menstrual cloth pads. How far do we want to go to reduce use of disposable paper products?

We use three to four hand towels a week. Your hands are clean when you touch them so short of them falling into something there's no need to replace them often. The amount of laundry caused in negligible. A fresh towel when guests come over is proper etiquette. I even have nicer ones for this purpose. If you're having a ton of guests over, I put out three or four so if one's damp they can find a dry one. No biggie.

Every one of my friends knows I run a paper towel-free home. They don't expect to have disposable towels and they shouldn't. I don't see the point in disposable towels for the home. It's wasteful and just sheer laziness/paranoia.

It's the fact that Kleenex would spend so much money, likely millions, on bringing this ridiculous product to market that gets me.

Even the design is hideous—who would want to place this nasty eyesore on their towel bar???

What a waste, literally.

I bought these for our family Christmas get together (over 25 people) -- I think they make more sense than those fancy disposable towels some folks put out in their bathrooms.

They are in the linen closet now until the next big gathering.

Funny, no one gets riled up about disposable diapers -- suddenly they become "greener", use less water, blah blah blah. Not true for hand towels? Hmmm, I smell the subtle stench of a self-serving argument!

I host a block party every year and plan to purchase a few of these. With a large group of people using the same towels becomes gross. As the hostess the last thing I want to think of is changing the towel every few hours.

Our society is so germ-obsessed. Has anyone seen the commercial for the hands-free soap dispenser to put in a home bathroom? Ridiculous. Where does it end?

I do think these are a good idea if you have people over, or if someone in the household is sick. I don't consider myself germ-obsessed, but the fact is that hands are how most cold germs get transmitted. I don't have time for colds.

Because I want my bathroom to feel like the one at the gas station? No. Cloth for me, thank you.

Guys, it's not actually healthy to try to avoid ALL germs. Your immune system can handle it. they aren't going to make you sick, just to use a cloth towel someone has used on their cleaned hands. So if those germs aren't going to make you ill, why are you worrying about them? I have a friend who used to have a very compromised immune system, so I could maybe see a product like this for him, but unless your immune system is very, very broken, this seems like pointless germ phobia.

I too saw this commercial and couldn't believe it was serious. It was like seeing a commercial for cigarettes or a commercial advertising Styrofoam cups for coffee. I'm glad to be of the generation that sees this kind of thing as a terrific waste.

I'm trying to think of where these might be useful- a hospital or doctor's office? But Kleenex was aiming this commercial at the schmoe consumer. The schmoe consumer was probably sitting back thinking either "WTF?!" or "Why would I spend so much on fancy paper towels?"

Yes, I completely agree. I was very disheartened to see the commercial when I thought we were finally starting to make significant strides towards eliminating one-use paper products. Here's hoping they don't sell well.

it will look great next to my dixie cup dispenser

http://www.thefrugalgirl.com/2010/05/oh-kleenex-i-am-disappointed-in-you/

I hadn't seen this product yet, but it makes me sad to see that it 1) exists and 2) people are trying to justify why the market needs this. Sure, if you have 100 people over or an immuno-compromised child in the house, then regular hand towels aren't going to do the trick. If you want to buy some sort of special disposable towels for those occasions, go for it. By the way, don't they already exist? Aren't they just called paper towels?

But there is no way that this is a useful or even justifiable product to use on an everyday basis in an ordinary house.

And of course that doesn't mean that I'm implicitly endorsing every other product on the market. But, come on, I think if plastic diapers were only just beginning to be advertised we would feel horrified by the environmental impact (even if we were also tempted by the convenience).

It's not always about germs. Some jobs will leave the paper or cloth towel used to do them fit only to be discarded. For those jobs, I think it would be better to use a paper than a cloth towel if paper can do the job. It would be better to save a cloth towel for such jobs that it can handle and a paper towel cannot.

When sharing a bathroom with others on a daily basis, I insist that each person has their own towels and washcloths which they keep on their own towel bar. That solves the problem of sharing germs.

For parties, instead of using expensive and wasteful (one-use) disposable hand towels , I like this idea...
Put a pile of fresh, folded (reserved for parties only) washcloths by the sink, or roll them and place in a decorative container. Have another container labeled "used washcloths." Everyone will have a clean cloth to dry their hands on and the cloths can be used dozens of times before looking dingy (at which time they can be used for everyday use or as cleaning rags, and can be replaced with new "party cloths").

The addition of one or two dozen party washcloths in a load of laundry is no big deal...work-wise or resource-wise.

What happens in this thread is exactly what Kleenex and co. are aiming at: creating a fake "need" for their products ("Oh look, it's a new product! I may probably have a need for it so I should buy.") It's a marketing trick and unfortunately a marketing trick that will cost you money, produce more waste (for the consumer to dispose of!) and is totally unnecessary for 99% of consumers.

A couple of people have mentioned people washing "gunk" off their hands and that any wiping will destroy the towel. I do understand that manual labor involving grease and battery acid and that sort of thing will wreak havoc on hand towels--and hands. But I can't imagine that any Kleenex product is the solution here. This thing isn't being marketed to mechanics shops (which have much sturdier products--such as rags that can be washed and reused). This is being marketed to moms.

If you have white hand towels out in the bathroom and your spouse wipes car grease on them--that's not a towel problem, it's a communication problem. I don't mean to be condescending, but I grew up in my dad's shop and he sure didn't use ordinary hand towels or paper towels to clean up.

@delilah2: I cut flowers from my garden... I'm pretty sure that's not exactly an "environmental nightmare".

Sure, some people will cut their own (but are yours watered with rainwater only?! etc.) but the post was about Valentine's day and explicitly mentioned a dozen roses. Roses aren't blooming anywhere in the US right now.

I've been waiting for someone to point this out! It makes no sense - if your hand are clean when you use a hand towel & you wash them regularily, what is the issue?!? And if your hands aren't clean when you get to the drying stage, then that is the unsanitary problem to be addressed. What also bugs me is the automatic soap dispenser, designed because the "soap pump is so dirty". Sure - but what do you necessarily do each time you touch the soap dispenser? Wash hands!!

I get the idea but I would NEVER buy/use those because they are wasteful...even though I can compost them in my city.
However, for those of you share a hand towel with your loved one or child(ren), then that's gross too! Great way to spread germs people! But I don't need to tell you all that.

I'm fine with old rags, cloth hand towels, and disposable paper towels, and have no interest in Kleenex's product. I'd be very surprised if it were to sell well in the "new normal" economy.

There are a few great points made here.

I agree that selective environmentalism is often in play, but also that it's silly to argue that not washing a hand towel in your weekly load offsets the impact of manufacturing, shipping, and disposing of these towels (and don't forget the box they are packaged in). I think these are a step backwards is several ways. Environmentally, like it or not, these are a no. Germ-phobia is mass marketed to us as a culture, and even articulate, intelligent people posting on this intelligent, articulate website fall prey.

We lived without hand-sanitizers, plastic toilet seat covers, flu shots, and one-use towels in the bathroom until relatively recently, and statistics show we are less healthy and get sick more often than the generations before us.

The only people benefitting from this germ fear are the companies selling you the products they've convinced you we "need" to be "safe". Very "Bowling for Columbine."

One more thing...why not have save old stained cloth towels for dirty jobs? Have a pretty basket with a lid in the bathroom for your husbands' or kids' dirty hands, and leave the clean pretty ones out?

i'll stick with my weekly hand towel. i live alone and it is not a problem. neither is laundering them. they don't add that much to a regular laundry load. there is no reason for a person to be doing more laundry over a handtowel or two a week. the problem there is that middle america has adopted a ludicrous code of doing laundry on a near-daily basis. stop doing that. no one with a week's worth of outfits needs to do laundry more than weekly. just b/c you have a home machine, doesn't mean you have to use it every day.

"with water becoming scarcer worldwide, washing clothing as often as we do may become impossible."

Do you not realize how much water it takes to make paper and print boxes?

BIG HATE. More environmental raping.

I believe that it is a personal preference - no different than paper towels or disposible diapers. The choice is really up to the individual and if a friend or neighbor wants to use these instead of a regular hand towel, I'm not going to make a stink about it because like the choice is mine, the choice is theirs.

Personally for me, I wouldn't buy or use these. I try not to use paper towels anymore and instead cut up old bath towels for cleaning up messes - mostly because it saves me money and I'm producing less garbage, as well as reusing something that I would have otherwise gotten rid of.

I don't see it as an improvement, I totally agree with other posters who said that they have issues with using one hand towel with a party of friends over...but I just put out a stack of clean hand towels when I am expecting a lot of guests.

@Delilah: I guess I don't understand (because I'm surely ignorant on this topic) how cut flowers are an "environmental nightmare". I guess I can understand that there must be a lot of fertilizer and energy used to grow the flowers (I just use flowers from my deck or live plants that I have grown in vases for my home) but I'm not seeing how flowers which are fully compostable produce as much havoc as a factory churning out disposable paper towels that most people will bin. I'm not trying to be snotty, I just really don't get it.

I really hate this and can't help but cringe at "the type" of people who would think this a necessity. Who would leave a dirty towel up that long anyway?!? Ours would NEVER get even close to that dirty. Just wash the dang thing! BUT, this commercial did provide some good... it made me think, "well, I use paper towels often. Isn't that sort of the same thing?" Yes, yes it is. So, as a result of the introduction of this {awful and wasteful} product, I'm using FAR less paper towels and just washing my tea towels and rags more. Thanks Kleenex, you actually helped ME save the planet. How ironic.

It's definitely more sanitary to use towels like this. I wouldn't be against it either if I had a compost pile. There's really tons of stuff you can easily compost including these towels.

Hate this. So tacky.

For people who are saying it's more sanitary, how? Aren't you drying your clean hands? I hate this product. A lot.

Wow! Lot's of controversy on this! I think the important thing to remember here is who the product is being marketed to, like a lot of you said. Not for parties, not for places (like doctor's offices) that require more disposable products, but an everyday family, which, honestly, is absurd.

Even living with roommates, I am a stickler about prohibiting the use of paper towels—they are so wasteful! I just wash the hand towels/dish towels I buy when I wash my bath towels. Seems easy and harmless enough!

Regardless, I think the real problem with this product is Kleenex is marketing this "chic" paper towel to everyday families. It's just a paper towel in a fancy box, and it's supposed to be "revolutionary." I really hope people realize what a crock this is, and stick to using hand towels for everyday AND for guests.

Also, the user who mentioned disposable diapers: I agree, those are incredibly wasteful. Reusable are the way to go.

This is exactly what I thought when my mother offered one to me during my last visit. She lives by herself and hardly ever has company. It made me sad that she spent some of her limited income on something that was, for her, so wasteful. I'll never get rid of my cloth towels, even if it means a couple of extra items in my laundry.

I cannot believe these hit the market. I do see the use for some disposable products, but not these. Sharing a hand towel with family has never been an issue for us.

I'll match your cringe and raise you an audible sigh. We DO have washing machines right?

I saw these in a restaurant last weekend. They don't seem any different in that context from the paper towels the restaurant would have supplied otherwise.

Are people seriously comparing feces and urine-filled diapers to hands that have just been scrubbed with soap and water? Really?

Ironically it's those infants who when they grow up will live in a much more polluted world because we've destroyed the forests and streams.

Think it's hard to live without disposeable towels? Try living with deeply polluted air and water. Trees and other plants filter both the air and water. This Kleenex product DIRECTLY destroys forests at an alarming rate.

NRDC has launched a campaign against Kleenex. Do you really want to support the clear cutting of the Boreal Forest?

http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/041118.asp

The reason there are so many people with debilitating allergies in our country is because we're all huge germophobes. I worked at a vet clinic and learned how to scrub in for surgery. I'm telling you, this product does more harm than good.

Wash your hand towels along with your other towels. It makes the most of the water and is not wasteful. If you're worried about water consumption, realize that it takes TONS of water to make paper products.

Once these forests are cut, it takes almost 100 years for them to grow back. Now, who's going to break the news to our kids?

This is so depressing. I can't believe that this backward way of thinking is acceptable in this country.

Not only wasteful, but also trashy in my opinion. Trashy as in classless, not just trash-creating. Notice how the nicest hotels and restaurants do not use disposable towels? When I have a bunch of guests over I think ahead and put out a couple extra hand towels.
This commercial made my heart sink too. Total regression.

The tv ad for this product is gross and ridiculous. Change your hand towels dummies!

Just so no one is offended, I mean the dummies on tv.

i truly dislike one-time-use disposable items. in my opinion, they're just a symptom of a lazy society.

if it's THAT big of an issue, then why not just use a single cloth, in a designated bin, after each hand wash? same concept, and you could WASH them afterward instead of throwing them away.

this product is just a way to make people (who are already too lazy to wash their hand towel regularly) feel better about germs that shouldn't even BE THERE after washing your hands properly.

we're killing ourselves with convenience...

LOL @ec05! :)

Ugh. This is disgusting on so many levels. I'm sure they'll sell like hot cakes, though.

I've noticed on green living forums that many young people have to ask what to use an alternative to paper towels. It's sad that an entire generation has been raised entirely with disposable goods.

My comment made me sound like an old fogie. I'm a young person as well, just one who was raised with cloth napkins.

A nice video on the subject...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJPAIMl628s&feature=related

Chenell, I could not agree more with your comments. If it were true that common cloth towels were such a health risk, everyone who uses them should be sicker than everyone who doesn't. I am the farthest thing from a germophobe. We wash our hands (although probably not well enough to go into an operating room), but I have never disinfected doorknobs or faucet handles or anything--and my kids and I are the healthiest people we know.

@ burnttoast, you might be appalled to know that I even kiss my husband and children...with my mouth. I also have a baby that I breastfeed, so we all tend to share our germs. Last time I checked, I didn't live in a house full of strangers, but people I eat with, bathe, and sleep with. The transfer of germs between us is inevitable, and a hand towel that we share that has only had clean hands wiped on it is the least of my worries when it comes to my health.

I think it's ridiculous to go through so much waste and how bad does it look on that towel bar?

As for the flowers I don't see how a biodegradable (compostable) material is hurting the environment.

@sally305 - good point. By this logic you'd have to have disposeable towels after showering just in case someone else touched them!

I think one reason people seem more sickly now is that a lot of the popular disinfectants are toxic and get into the air. I think they're part of the cause of increased asthma in kids. Germophobia may well do more harm than good in a home.

Most cut flowers are grown in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia in large greenhouse environments staffed by underpaid, non-unionized workers. The greenhouses are carefully climate controlled to yield the best cut flowers, and they are also heavily sprayed with pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Because cut flowers are grown in nations with more lax environmental laws, many banned substances including DDT and methyl-bromide are used in flower production. These substances have a profound impact on the health of the workers: many suffer from health problems such as skin conditions, respiratory problems, impaired vision, and birth defects thanks to their exposure to these chemicals.

In addition to hurting the workers, these chemicals are also extremely harmful for the environment. Methyl-bromide has been linked with destruction of the ozone layer, for example, while DDT usage worldwide led to serious problems for many animal and bird populations. Most greenhouses which produce cut flowers dump chemicals on their crops in large amounts. These chemicals later enter the bodies of workers, the flowers, and the ground water. Water pollution around commercial greenhouses hurts animal and fish populations and also has an impact on human life as well, by reducing the amount of drinkable water.

Once the flowers are grown, they still must be shipped to a final destination, greatly contributing to global pollution. Some cut flowers may be shipped thousands of miles, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at every step of the way. At the florist, the flowers are arranged and prepared for sale, and some florists have complained of skin and other health problems as a result of prolonged contact with cut flowers. Finally, the consumer brings the flowers home, perhaps tossing them carelessly into a shopping cart laden with organic, fair trade produce and other food stuffs.

Source: http://www.wisegeek.com/are-cut-flowers-bad-for-the-environment.htm

What I can't figure out is why Kleenex designed the boxes to look like a paper towel dispenser in a gas station bathroom. Yuck. Those boxes stopped me dead in my tracks at the grocery store the other day. I was like WHAT are those!?

You know, it all still comes down to consuming for me. We consume to much, and this is step in the wrong direction.

As always, I appreciate that there are so many enlightening comments on the post. I do wish people could express with a little less snark, but I none-the-less appreciate the passion and thoughtfulness inherent in most of the comments.

I bought this and not ashamed of it. I don't use it all the time. I still keep a cloth hand towel for everyday wiping. The Kleenex is there for when I see the need to wipe my sink and counter. It's perfect!!

I think some people here need to relax a bit more -- I'm pretty sure you have some wasteful things at home.

"It's definitely more sanitary to use towels like this. I wouldn't be against it either if I had a compost pile. There's really tons of stuff you can easily compost including these towels."
So as long as something is compostible then we can consume as much of it as we want? I don't know which is more backwards, the presumption that it's ok to consume as much as we want as long as it's compostible, or the idea that it's more sanitary to use this kind of ridiculously unnecessary product.

I grew up in a family of six with towels that were not washed very often (maybe every week or two), I also only wash the towels I share with my boyfriend every week or two, and I could count on two hands the number of times I have been out sick from school or work (I'm thirty this year and what's more, I work in very close contact with kids and adults all day). All I can say to people who think that using towels is unsanitary is: COP ON!!

Who washes their hands at home? Kidding. But when I saw this commercial, it really made me angry, how wasteful.

I just have a towel for cleaning up around the sink (when I wash my face) and one for drying my face and hands. And sometimes I rely on the classic "pants towel." This just seems really silly and once again another scare tactic for germs. Personally, anti-bacterial sanitizers really gross me out and the use of all those chemicals makes me uneasy.

I would guess you can get what 50 hand towels in a normal size washer? (I don't own that many anyways) They don't really add much to the wash. So I find these wasteful. Under the weird times I do have people over (which is never anyone beyond family and friends) no one seems to mind using the hand towel we have hanging anyways (and I keep a clean one next to the sink in case the one hanging gets too damp). You are only drying your FRESHLY CLEANED hands, so it's just water.

Isn't it wasteful and bad for the environment to redecorate your home? What difference does it make what color your walls are? What a waste of paint and paint is not good for the environment. We shouldn't be buying newly made furniture - unless it's made out of recyled materials, new bedding, new carpeting, or new TVs until all of the old ones are dead. Flea market and antique malls have plenty of furnishings for our homes -- just pick one on a bus route so you don't pollute the environment driving around looking for something that suits your taste. Don't replace your bathroom or kitchen fixtures until they start to leak, no matter how ugly you think they are. Let's be as green as we can in everything we do.

Kleenex uses old growth forests to make their paper products, so I refuse to buy any of their products. http://www.kleercut.net/en/

agreed... completely unnecessary. i'll stick to my towels thanks.

I am quite opposed to these, and I am nearly as "green" as I should be. They are just plain tacky. I would NEVER want a guest to see these in my bathroom. That is what GUEST TOWELS are for! Hand towels do not get dirty after one use. Why are we trying so hard to make sure we all have to live in bubbles in the future? I am so over this fear of germs trend.

Hate-Hate-Hate!

We use these. We run an office out of a residential building. We have a lot of people coming in and out - hand towels with that many strangers is gross to me. It's too small of a space to have a hand dryer (550 square foot apartment with a tiny bathroom). We don't use them at home, but we love them at work.

Well said LoveThisSite; if people could even take a grain of advice from what you say, and apply it to their lives, we'd have a much healthier planet. I'm not perfect, and in fact I am going to paint my bedroom today (moved in 7 months ago and the dark grey walls aren't help my SAD tendencies in dark grey northern France), but I do try to source many second-hand things in a local thrift store that I either walk, cycle or get the tram to. It's cheaper, greener, more interesting, and more fun to shop for your home that way (slower too but what's the rush?)

I only see a use for parties etc. Where a single guest towel may be used over and over...not for every day imo

I have NEVER been to a party with paper towels in a bathroom. How cold is that.

I confess I bought these -- hoping I could use them as disposable wash cloths. I use a wash cloth to wash my face and I want a clean one each time, so I go thru a lot and I don't like hanging them around to dry before they can go into the hamper.
Anyhow, these disposable hand towels suck -- they're thin + not much different from a sheet of Viva paper towels. The dispenser is seriously ugly in the bathroom. I doubt these will catch on so probably nothing to get too worked up about...

If people want to spend their money on these, it is their loss. Less money for them to spend on the Easy Mac that comes with its own bowl.

Agreed that this is ridiculous for in-home use. We have nasty old stained CLOTH towels for cleaning the house and dirty jobs. Regular towels for everyday hand drying. And nicer hand towels for guests.

But I have a comment to the people saying that cloth towels are sanitary because your hands are clean when you dry them. Put out a white hand towel (especially try this next time you have a big party) and see if you still believe that people dry clean hands only at the end of the night.

I feel like what is "environmentally friendly" gets switched around often. Trees are a renewable resource and paper can easily be recycled. Therefore, maybe the laundry use of having washcloths will be "completely wasteful" and an outrage in a few years. Sustainability is much broader than the evil of paper towels.

the comments on this post are to the point of self-righteous hilarity.

Kleenex must innovate to survive as a company. They're not going to survive just on facial tissues in a square box. What's sad is that we, as consumers, haven't sent the message that their R&D money should be spent on developing more environmentally benefical products. They wouldn't bring this to market if their research didn't indicate they could sell it. If you're really opposed to this product, let Kleenex know and let the store manager at the stores that stock it know.

I wouldn't use these at home, but I've found them very useful for the bathroom in our small boutique. we didn't want to install a big ugly papertowel dispenser on the wall, so we've been buying these instead.

I've said this on a similar post before - I have a stack of bright white Martex washcloths I keep in a basket next to the sink. They're super absorbent, fluffy, and much more pleasant to dry your hands with than a flimsy paper towel, which hardly even gets them dry in the first place. There is also a longer hand towel hanging from a bar, which is what I usually use. (Hell, I'll even wipe my hands on my bath towel that's hanging from the over-the-door rack.)

Guests have their choice - they can use the big hand towel or have their own fresh washcloth. The cloths even have their own bin next to the trash can. And I just toss them all in with the towels on laundry day.

This system is cheap, solved my worries of wasting paper, and is liked by my guests. Works for me.

slippery slope: disposable bath towels.

completely asinine either way.

avimom, you make a good point. Although I am not sure how much "innovating" Kleenex needs to do when the company's name is synonymous with a product (like "Band-Aid"). And as environmentally conscious as many of us try to be, I doubt most of the people on this site would give up their Kleenex to blow their noses into old-style cotton handkerchiefs. (I wouldn't, but I did use cloth diapers for both of my babies...go figure.)

@delilah2 Regarding the post on vases... I grow flowers in my garden and display them in vases in my home. I may just be ignorant, but how on earth is this an environmental nightmare?! I use a little water to keep them alive, then they go on the compost heap and the vase gets washed after the dishes.

Maybe this was already said, there are A LOT of comments here and I just can't read them all. But, shouldn't we assume that the people using the washable, reusable hand towels have just WASHED their hands. Clean hands on the clean towel... really, what is wrong with everyone. I have survived 30 years without dieing from my hand towel, and so will you!

Write Kimberly-Clark to protest - consumerservicesdept@kcc.com - they just don't get it.

My problem isn't with the product itself it's the advertising. It's saying that if you don't use this product you are gross, nasty, and uncivilized. Personally I prefer products that get more than one use. This looks like paper towels in a fancy package. No thank you. If I'm going to have a plethora of guests I will fold some environmentally friendly paper towels in a nice basket (which I've seen done and looks nice). Maybe that makes me uncivilized, I can take that I've been called worse!