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Paper towel recycling

Improve your organisation’s recycling rates with Shred Station’s recycling service for used paper hand towels.

Call: 01603 513 271

Hands being dried with paper hand towels in bathroom.

Why haven’t paper towels been recyclable until now?

Paper towels have always been difficult and expensive to recycle. This is because most hand towels are manufactured using a wet-strength agent. The wet-strength agent prevents the fibres of the paper towels from disintegrating when wet. This means they can absorb water and effectively dry hands without falling apart – unlike toilet tissue, for example, which does need to disintegrate.

This wet-strength agent is why, at your place of work, there may be signs in bathrooms requesting you to put hand towels in the bins provided, rather than down the toilet, where they wouldn’t dissolve and would clog up the plumbing. It is also why you wouldn’t use toilet tissue to dry your hands.

In the past, there hasn’t been a cost-effective recycling solution for paper towels. This is because the process of dissolving materials treated with a wet-strength agent has always been very expensive. As hand towels are typically inexpensive, it hasn’t been economically viable for any recycling companies to create a recycled hand towel product that would be affordable for the end user. However, technology has developed over time, and an affordable process is now achievable.

So... now you can recycle paper hand towels?

Yes! Paper hand towels can be recycled – but there are some caveats.

The paper towels must not be contaminated with any other type of waste.

Your hand towel recycling bin must not contain any other bathroom waste. This means no wet wipes, sanitary products, soap bottles, or anything else.

The paper towels must not have been used in a clinical or hazardous setting.

Bathroom hand towels that have just been used to dry hands are fine. However, paper towels that have been used to wipe up lubricants, oils, blood, or other bodily fluids are not. Any hand towel bins contaminated with these types of materials will not be suitable for recycling.

How does the paper towel recycling service work?

The paper towel recycling service works in 4 simple steps.

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Segregation

Use a clear plastic bin liner to collect your used hand towels in a dedicated bin. Ensure your hand towels are separated from all other types of waste with no contamination. When full, move these bin bags to a central area ready for collection. We can provide bins to store hand towels in your central collection area.

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Collection

Shred Station will collect your paper towels during our regularly scheduled services. If hand towels make up a large percentage of your organisation’s waste, for example, at hospitals where hand dryers are not used, we can schedule additional collections.

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Compact and bale

We will transport the hand towels back to our closest depot. There, they will be baled and compacted, ready for transportation to a recycling mill.

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Recycling

When the hand towels arrive at the paper mill, they will be placed into a large pulper. The pulper is essentially a large vat filled with water, rotary mechanisms, and chemicals to dissolve the paper and deactivate the wet-strength agent. Once dissolved, the paper becomes a pulp suitable for reuse. The dissolved pulp is then heated to a high temperature, killing germs and ensuring that the new recycled tissue products it is turned into are both hygienic and safe to use.

We will transport your hand towels to a UK-based paper mill as part of our existing routing. This means no additional emissions are created in the process and, as with all of our services, any emissions will be offset to zero.