Best Recycled Paper Towels

What makes one recycled paper towel more recycled than another?

The post-consumer share. Every towel here is sold as “100% recycled,” and under the FTC’s Green Guides that bare claim means the whole product came from recovered material. That material can be pre-consumer, diverted during manufacturing, or post-consumer, paper that someone already used and put in a recycling bin. Only the post-consumer figure tells you how much of the roll came out of household and office recycling. What “Recycled Content” on Paper Towels Actually Means walks through the Green Guides rule in full.

How many sheets are on a recycled paper towel roll?

It depends on the roll, and each page states it. Seventh Generation’s unbleached roll has 120 sheets, its standard roll 140, and Who Gives A Crap’s 135, in 11 by 5.5 inch sheets the brand calls “adjustable.” The table above holds each figure from the brand’s own page. The Paper Goods Calculator turns your household’s rolls per week into rolls per year.

Our pick: Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Paper Towels, Unbleached

This is the most post-consumer fiber any page here states. Seventh Generation says the towels are “made of 100% recycled fiber, with a minimum of 80% post-consumer recycled fiber,” and “unbleached by chlorine.” The page states “0% Dyes, Inks, & Fragrances” and says the brand never adds “any dyes or fragrances during the paper-making process.” It claims FSC certification under certificate C115279, held by the parent company.

One caveat. At 120 sheets it is the shortest roll of the three. The page also says “contaminants found in the recycling stream may be found in our paper towels,” which is the plain trade-off of a high post-consumer share, stated by the brand itself.

Runner-up: Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Paper Towels

The same brand’s standard roll states a minimum of 50 percent post-consumer recycled fiber, with the rest of the 100 percent recycled content unspecified. It has 140 sheets a roll, the most of the three, is 2-ply, and carries the same “0% Dyes, Inks, & Fragrances” statement and FSC claim as the pick. The page carries the same note that contaminants from the recycling stream may be present.

It sits second on the post-consumer number alone. If you’d rather have more sheets a roll than the highest post-consumer share, it is the pick here.

Also consider: Who Gives A Crap 100% Recycled Paper Towels

Who Gives A Crap sells its towels as “100% Recycled Paper Towels” in 2-ply, 135-sheet rolls, at “56.7sq ft per roll.” The page says the towels have “no added dyes, inks, scents or harmful chemicals” and that the rolls come in paper wrappers “printed with soy-based inks.”

It sits third because the page states no post-consumer share. The brand’s toilet paper page says it uses “post-consumer paper,” but the towel page doesn’t say how much, and the record carries only what the towel page states. It also names no certification.

What the pages leave out

None of the three pages publishes an absorbency or strength test. The comparison here is the recycled-content claim, the sheet count and what each brand says it leaves out. Seventh Generation’s FSC certificate is held under its parent company’s name, and Runlow could not query FSC’s directory to confirm it, so it is recorded as the brand’s claim.

How we researched this

Every product fact in this guide comes from each brand’s own website, read on the date each record shows. Nothing was retrieved from a retailer listing or a review. The definition of recycled content comes from the FTC’s Green Guides, as covered in Runlow’s explainer on the subject. Runlow has not tested any of these towels and makes no claim about how well any of them absorbs. No prices are shown.

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