What's wrong with reusable towels? Well, every time you wipe up a spill you have to throw them in the laundry. Most people don't have hampers in their kitchens, and I don't have the storage space for the 80 reusable towels that would be the equivalent of 80 paper towels I can have sitting on my counter.

I use reusable towels for drying dishes and my hands because that keeps them cleaner longer. But for cleaning up spills I use paper towels.

I confess to using paper towels too...but on a smiliar subject...

Does anyone know if those automatic flushing toilets save water or just waste more water and electricity.

The office building I work in has them and one recently flushed 5 times while I was using it!! Normally they do tend to flush more than if they were manualy controlled, plus they use batteries.

Seems like a step backwards, but maybe building maintence like them, maybe they break less, and maybe they save water or something. I think they make a lot of sense on sinks, no more dripping faucets when soemone doesn't turn them off all the way, and only water when your hands are down there.

I went paper towel-less several months ago. I was skeptical at first but wanted to see how things would go. It is surprisingly not difficult. It just requires you to look at things a little differently some times. You don’t have to use a new towel every time you need to clean up a spill. That comes from the disposable mind set. I keep the same towel in the kitchen for cleaning until either I do laundry or it is completely dirty. One spill does not do a cloth towel in, unless it is a really big spill. Just clean up a spill and rinse in the sink if need be.

As for this product, it seems like it would be a waste of time and money. Would anyone really want it? I hate those automatic towel dispensers I find sometimes in public restrooms.

Alton Brown of Good Eats fame suggest that for health reasons, it's best to use paper towels to clean up spills and wipe doen countertops as reusable towels can harbor harmful bacteria.

While I personally have reusable hand towels instead, I wouldn't fault someone for wanting to be on the safe side.

I do agree with you on this issue though. Whether you choose to use rolled paper towels or not, this sort of device is ridiculous. How much more lazy can someone get that they have to have one of these in their kitchen. Why not just hire a maid to tear one off when you need it.

:)

Anyone thinking of switching from paper towels I suggest buying newborn cloth diapers. You can buy them organic cotton and they are super absorbent. We have a drawer of them and whenever something spills you just grab one of them. I usually hang it over the side of my sink until it is fully used, which usually is a whole days worth of spills. Then I toss it in with the regular laundry. When I feel they've gotten too stained or gross they get demoted to shop rags.

Its really surprising how easy it was to switch. I used the lowest drawer in the kitchen so now even my 4 and 2 year olds go to the rag drawer to wipe up spills.

I never use paper towels at home -- I don't find it that difficult at all. I live in a city apartment, so it's not that daunting to walk from the kitchen to where my hamper is. Also, I've never gone through 80 towels between laundry loads. I realize the person who said that was sort of exaggerating, but it obscures the point that it's really not that difficult to make the switch.

Another problem with gadgets like this is that they break, and they're not useful enough to rush to fix, so you wind up back where you started anyway. I remember being in the bathroom of a restaurant that had one of those automatic dispensers with the infrared light on the front, and of course it was broken, and so they'd just left the paper towel roll on top of the dispenser for people to tear off manually -- which was more inconvenient than if they'd just had an old-school dispenser that you pulled on.

That's stupid.

It's actually slower than ripping the towel off by hand.

Of course, it only dispenses ONE sheet at a time. One could argue that it forces people to use fewer sheets.

Possible target users:

1. People who have only one, or no hands.

2. People who don't want to get the rest of the roll dirty/wet (probably obsessive over germs)

3. Intelligent four-legged animals.

4. Winners of contests that give lifetime supplies of batteries.

5. Rube Goldberg

Another useless uni-tasker ..

Is it just me or did he say half-sh*t and full-sh*t :))

Thank goodness they finally came out with this invention. My life has been utterly hectic and I have been thinking how simple my life would be if I could simply have a device that I plug in, press a button, wait a couple seconds and there's a piece of paper I can tear off. No longer do I have to go through the difficult process of simply pulling and tearing.

It is very sanitary. Before I used to have to grab and end of the paper towel and tear it off, now with this machine I can grab an end of a paper towel and tear it off but I get to put my fingers on a machine which has been touched by a bunch of other people, whereas before they were just touching paper towels that they throw away.

Oh how my life will be simple. As an added bonus this product takes up more counter space because if there's one thing I can't deal with is too much free counter space.

You don’t have to use a new towel every time you need to clean up a spill.

Like the whole "don't flush when you pee," try telling my wife this. She insists that the moment you use a towel to do anything other than dry dishes or your hands (two concessions I got from her), it's too dirty to use for anything else.

And since I'm not allowed to use a towel more than once, I would need to store 80 towels on the countertop to make up for 1 roll of paper towels.

I think treehugger should do a series of articles about living with non-treehuggers.

While this product seems like overkill, I do think the automatic dispensers in public restrooms are functional. They are more hygienic and the delay keeps people from using/wasting paper that they don't need.

Of course, you can argue that the driers are more efficient but some people refuse to use them.

examples like this is why the free market does not work. Let the market decide if a product is useless? Why let it get that far to begin with. There really needs to be some kind of panel to manage items like this.

disposable Plastic liner for your crock pot anyone?

TH recently posted on how our antibacterial products are breeding superbugs. Germophobia is making us weaker, and has been linked to childhood illnesses, allergies and asthma. We need some dirt. One towel a day would be more than adequate unless you are mopping up blood, in which case you should eat less meat anyway.

As far as the automatic dispensers in bathrooms being more hygenic, there are several designs for towel dispensers that have no moving parts. The user touches only the new towel, so there is total cleanliness. Using batteries to dispense towels is sociopathic.

Putting aside the debate between disposable paper towels vs. reusable cloth towels, I will comment only on this specific device. I've tried three motorized dispensers such as this. This was the cheapest, most reliable, most functional, and most easily deployable. Other more expensive dispensers require installation, and tend to be unreliable. And when it breaks, you have to uninstall it and send it back for repairs. I've had this device for about a year, and it works great. It's awesome for only about $60.

Its almost unavoidable to sometimes use paper towels. I use cloth towels for dishes, and sponges for minor spills. But sometimes while cooking, paper towels are useful. Paper towels come from renewable resources. Either way, if you use cloth towels, you're using energy to clean them. If you use sponges, you're using energy when you rise them out. As for devices, I actually own this thing, and its not that bad. I do feel bad about using batteries, and with it had an A/C adapter.

Ok I know this article is way old, but I just stumbled across it and WOW talk about lazy. What is this world coming to. Soon we will all just be sitting on couches and our muscle will atrophy as robots do all the work and we are feed though tubes. Amazing.