Maybe you already have enough kitchen towels in your life, in which case, please do not buy our 100% hemp tea towels. But, maybe your existing towels are stained, or faded, or have holes, or maybe you are looking to give a gift to someone in your life. If that’s the case, I hope you will consider buying our towels, over, say some cotton or linen tea towels.
The Purpose of a Tea Towel
The main function of a tea towel is to dry dishes. At Junu Jungle, we debate that statement a lot because a tea towel is also an important piece of decoration, and it has lots of secondary uses like doubling as a potholder for holding a hot pan, or for protecting a table or wiping up a spill. According to Good Housekeeping, it’s ultimate purpose is to dry dishes.
100% Hemp Tea towels are well suited for this purpose. The traditional fabric for tea towels is linen because linen is a fine fabric that, when pressed, has just the right amount of stiffness to look great hanging off an oven handle. Linen is also great at wicking. Meaning it draws water away from something wet. That is because of its long, porous fibers. Hemp, it turns out, is like linen in these ways, only its fibers are longer, and it is just better at it.
The wicking properties of the tea towel, also make it great for those secondary uses of wiping up spills. And hemp doesn’t easily stain. Hemp is a very strong, long-lasting material. Most wear-and-tear on fabrics happens in the washing and drying process. Hemp is naturally stain-resistant and will stand up to a good hot-water wash.
As a fabric for holding pots, I would describe hemp as no different than any other tea towel. Again, the structure of the fibers makes it similar to linen. Since they are hollow, they have a natural insulating property. In this regard, you can expect the performance of a hemp tea towel to be pretty much identical to that of a common linen tea towel.
Our Designs
We have hemp tea towels that are dyed using an eco-friendly dye that is so safe we water our plants with the byproducts. Our dyes are Azo-free and approved by OEKO-TEX for safety.
If you are interested in our printed towels, these are printed in a plastic-free process using renewable materials like rubber and woodblocks. These towels are block-printed by hand in Los Angeles. Many of our designs are influenced by our love for nature. We like to believe by presenting natural patterns we are helping to spread messages about sustainability, and respect for the Earth.
Our most popular line is our California Native Plant series, supporting our belief in growing native plants to build habitats for endangered and at-risk species. So many plants and animals are threatened by urbanization and the choices we make to plant foreign species.
We have other lines as well, such as our Indian Heritage designs for those who love Indian designs and culture. These reflect the life and influences of our artist, who is Indian-American. In fact, the block printing process has played an important role in Indian history. It is a significant hand-craft that helped India establish financial independence from colonizers and remains a tradition today.
Sustainability
We use hemp because hemp has these wonderful properties listed above, and we believe in hemp as an important solution for sustainability. Our view on sustainability is that “no harm” is not good enough. In order to reverse global warming and other environmental issues of our time, we need solutions that are regenerative.
Hemp has been shown to be very effective at carbon sequestration. That is mainly because of it’s growth rate. An acre of hemp produces 600% as much fiber as an acre of linen. One way to look at it, that fiber is the byproduct of these plants capturing CO2.
For more reasons hemp is an ideal source of fabric, take a look at our article comparing the sustainability of different sources of fabric).
Check out our collection of 100% hemp tea towels.