what the hell!
 

The natural brown, the white or both? This is weird.
 

Is whey a common ingredient in paper towels...???
 

How disturbing that they use whey. Funnny how consumers can't get enough of their whey products! What scumbags claiming they "create personal care products that are healthy and safe for the air ..." Dairy cattle are hardly safe for our air!
 

I guess I will have to stop eating them.
 

Ew, really.

Why the hell would they do such a thing?

White, brown or both?
 

This is why I need to switch to cloth towels. Ugh.
 

What in the HELL does whey contribute to paper towels?! Oh man...

If whey IS a common ingredient, are there brands out there you guys know of that ARE defintiely vegan?

This blows my mind.
 

I have been blowing my nose in them for the last 4 days. That is gross.
 

Does this mean their toilet paper has whey in it too?
 

this is so not awesome...
 

Whey truly is an oppressor. Someone should get a tattoo to signify that.
 

I wrote to them after seeing this post. Sigh, I received this response yesterday and am trying to find an alternative to suggest to them. I contacted a few other paper towel makers to see what they use. BTW, so as not to confuse folks, kosher certified does not mean no animal products like their rep implies.

Oh and here's a technical paper for a patent that helps explain the process and how whey is used in the removal of adhesives (like the glue on the back of a post-it needs to be removed so it doesn't muck up the equipment when recycling paper, whey attracts the adhesive away from the equipt and paper) for the recycling of paper pulp for new paper content (it also cites another patent for a different process that essentially looked at albumins, globulins or blends thereof and spray-dried animal blood cells added to the pulp or sprayed onto glue deposition prone surfaces during the papermaking system)
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6527915-description.html

___________________________
Dear C,

Thank you for writing to Seventh Generation with your question about our paper towels. It is truly important that we hear from our consumers what they want from our products. I appreciate that you wrote to get the correct and full information and I welcome any other comments or questions that you might have about any of our products.

Whey is an ingredient in a product that our paper supplier uses to prevent the deposition of sticky materials that come from the raw recycled materials that our supplier uses (mainly adhesives found in some grades of waste paper). An example of the adhesives would be envelopes and Post-It Notes™ that so many people use in their homes and offices.

There is currently a trade-off between this product not being animal-free and not using wood from trees (which would destroy animals’ homes and sources of food). At times, we all have to make choices so that we are best meeting our individual needs. Please see our statement on animal testing here: http://www.seventhgeneration.com/making_difference/animal_testing.php.

All of our cleaning products, our baby products and our fem care line are totally animal and animal by-product free. All of our cleaning products are kosher certified and so are indeed free of any animal ingredients.

Thank you for your commitment to your lifestyle and finding products that are most appropriate for you to use. We have had a number of our consumers tell us that this has helped them transition into cloth napkins and fabric cleaning cloths. Please let me know if there is any other information that I can provide you with and know that your opinions and questions are quite valuable to us here at Seventh Generation.

Best regards,

Sue Holden
Consumer Relations Team Leader
Seventh Generation, Inc.
 

Paper recycling is a complete scam anyway.
 

I think this is a larger discussion the vegan community at large needs to have. If I am reading all this right, basically no recycled paper is technically vegan.

So how do you deal with the trade off? I think the 7th Generation rep has a point, even if I would rather take neither option.

In fact, I can't even say for sure that all paper is vegan either. They use a lot of funky junk in making paper.
 

do any vegan artists out there have any insight into this? i assume that many art supplies are far from vegan ... and now paper is suspect, too? what the hell is a vegan to do?
 

we just do the absolute best we can at living our vegan lifestyles...it is impossible to be 100% vegan. unless maybe we live in some taint-free bubble made from corn.
 

thanks for the patronizing defensiveness. it really, really adds a lot to the conversation.
 

I wrote them and got the same reply Cathy did.


I normally don't use paper towels but I bought some to soak up some fried eggplant i was making, and I occasionally use them for home made fries and fried tofu.

Anyone suggest using something besides paper towels for soaking up just friend foods?
 

i always just use the little paper sacks from the store that i put bulk mushrooms in. it seems to work pretty well for tofu and potatoes, but i don't know about eggplant.
 

I don't know about commercially but in my papermaking class we were told to use a gelatin sizing mixed in with the paper to make it waterproof. I got away with using a non gelatin external sizing on mine but it was a pain and apparently not a lot of people use it because of higher cost and it being more time consuming
.
Milk was also used by some of the others to ferment some of the pulp materials. Flax I believe.
Again not sure how that would translate commercially since they use wood pulp rather than plant.
 

As to soaking up oil from food, why not just use an old, clean towel? Like terry cloth (might be linty) or what I would call flour sack cloth (lint free stuff for drying dishes)? I keep old towels that get too ugly for me and use them for all the oily, dirty cleaning projects, like food spills and others for my bike.
 

For fries, I use the free paper we get every week or I place a metal cookie cooling rack in a cake pan and they drain just fine...