What’s a Skoy?

Skoy is a Swedish word that means “just for fun,” but that’s far from the entire story. Skoy is the name of a multi-use cloth that is 100 percent biodegradable, absorbent and re-usable for many months.

Made from natural cotton, wood-based cellulose pulp, and water-based inks, Skoy is a chlorine-free product that will break down completely in five weeks when composted. Yet it can last a very long time with minimal care and is best thought of as a paper towel replacement. With average household use, each Skoy saves 15 rolls of paper towels.

The website does a nice job of reminding us why this is important with some startling statistics.

- EPA estimates the U. S. generates 250 million tons of trash per year, of which around 34 percent is paper. Less paper waste reduces greenhouse gases in multiple ways as shown in the graphic below.

- According to American Dryer, a manufacturer of hand dryers, 17 trees are consumed to make one ton of paper towels.

- Even before the paper towels are used, each ton has claimed 20,000 gallons of water in chemical cleansing, as noted by Wikipedia.

- A decrease in U.S. household consumption of just three paper towel rolls per year would save 120,000 tons of waste and $4.1 million landfill dumping fees, according to the Go Green Tips provided by Arizona State University.

Two entrepreneurial women, shocked by numbers like these, brought the Skoy cloth to market with great environmental care. “Our factory has invested heavily in developing and implementing an integrated environmental recycling and disposal facility in which the economical use of energy and water is first and foremost. Production by-products are purified and recycled as far as possible within the process. Regeneration baths are returned to production by an evaporation process. Wastewater is treated at the site’s biological wastewater purification plants. This environmental concept is at the vanguard of operations-related environmental policy and has resulted in our factory becoming a reference company throughout the industry.”

Skoy is not only fun, it’s inspiring. I just ordered a bunch. Goodbye paper towels.