Where is my handkerchief?
ECOLOGICAL
A RE-USABLE small piece of cloth / towel is a wonderful must have accessory which we all should carry - the handkerchief or HANKY. But why don't we carry it any longer, what is wrong with carrying a hanky or it has become too outdated for modern times! Somehow it has lost some significance, or we have chosen convenient unsustainable options over it.
Age old hanky help us in wiping our hands, tears, nose, sweat, whatever the requirement be. It has been replaced by tissues. In corona times we learnt it is better to use and throw eye / nose discharge. Otherwise, why should we use tissues to wipe our hands or sweat, hanky should be used. Have we thought about how many tissues we use inadvertently in offices / restaurants. How many trees are cut down for the same. At times we don't even give it a thought. We all can certainly minimize the use of tissues. How unsustainable is to use tissues?
Habbits won’t change overnight but we need to begin doing small bits before they change into larger initiatives. Let us begin with using ‘few less tissues. Imagine if many of us use few less tissues everyday how many less tissues will be used and less will be produced and some trees could be saved. I always had a habbit of carrying a hanky since childhood and not just when I have a cold. I still carry it, and if I forget it sometimes, I feel something is missing. Let us be conscious of our holistic ecological footprint and try to minimize. Like we always carry our mobile phones we should carry our handkerchiefs.
While travelling why can’t we keep a hand towel in our cars / purse / bags and use it instead of using hundreds of tissues and then trying to find bins to throw the tissues. Let us save the tissues, save the trees and save ourselves from disposing the litter - hence save our environment. Let us bring back and embrace our age-old environment friendly habbits!! Ladies carry so many things in their bags / purses so why not just one more thing and for men - hanky was always considered chivalrous (any cues from movie 'Intern'), it still can. Trends are what we make so let's choose eco-friendly trends!
Many times, especially in the offices and restaurants we have this urge while and after eating to wipe our hands and we pull a tissue paper. However, at home if you have noticed that urge of pulling up the tissue is little less. There could be a case that after finishing the meal we get up, keep our plates and wash our hands and wipe it with towel. So, what is the issue in the offices, usually pantries or washrooms are not far-off that we cannot get and up and wash our hands at the end of eating. After washing we can use hankys to wipe our hands. The thing is ‘habbit’ or ‘conditioning’ and doing things as routine without thinking. We may not stop using paper tissues altogether but at least reduce by a few numbers daily. If all start using 10 less tissues every day and even 100 people start doing it, see the magnitude of saving below:-
10 X 100 = 1000 everyday (approx... 10 tissue boxes less of 100 tissue paper each)
1000 X 30 = 30,000 every month ( appox. 300 tissue boxes less)
30,000 X 12 = 3,60,000 every year (approx. 3600 tissue boxes less)
So with slight tweaking of habbit, 100 people can save 3.6 lakhs tissues. Imagine if thousands and millions of us start doing it we will be saving millions of tissue boxes every year. The scope is huge we just need to bring our re-usables back, carry hankys in our pockets / purses!