The secret war between paper napkins, paper towels

I  am killing an industry. So, maybe, are you.

And millennials? They are definitely responsible. Because of course they are.

It's paper napkins.

The industry is in a decades-long decline, dropping from a  solid 60 percent of American homes that used paper napkins daily two decades ago to barely 40 percent that do so now.

What's behind the decline? A love for the environment? A return of the cloth napkin industry? Sloppiness?

Nope. It's the versatile paper towel. And millennials, of course.

Since we blame them for everything that's dying (department stores, bar soap, golf, handshakes, movies, baseball), let's add paper napkins to the list.

According to a report from a company that studies such things, only 37 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds use paper napkins daily, compared to 61 percent of those 65 and older.

These kids and their social media and rideshare services and streaming videos and paper towels!

The challenge is to recapture the youth market. Time to make paper napkins cool again . . . assuming they were cool at some point.

An article on the paper napkin crisis in Vox reveals that paper napkins haven't always been popular.

There was, of course, initial resistance to paper napkins around 1900 because people were used to reusable, cloth napkins (although I presume coal miners and dirt farmers didn't use cloth napkins daily). Within the century, though, paper napkins revolutionized the world – particularly as fast food restaurants evolved. Soon, we were all using them. We bought big packages of them. We grabbed extras at McDonald's to use at our homes.

Twenty years ago, times changed. Reports emerged of the environmental dangers of paper napkins (which seems weird. They're paper, which is recyclable, right?), but the biggest challenge was the rise of paper towels.

Paper towels: The secret rival of napkins, because paper towels are the Swiss Army knife of kitchen cleaning products. You can use a paper towel to clean up a mess on the floor, wipe the counter top, function as a napkin and even serve as an emergency recipient of a nose blow. Paper towels are the rival to paper napkins.

This is like finding out that the ultra soft and ultra strong toilet paper types are rivals, not partners. Right? I thought paper napkins and paper towels were friends!

The market share for paper napkins declined as paper towels increased. Manufacturers of paper napkins attacked it the only way it could, by emphasizing that you can use their products as paper towels, too. Some products began to be advertised as napkins that are also paper towels.

It's the equivalent of McDonald's addressing a challenge by Taco Bell by launching a line of tacos and chalupas.

The paper towel response? To emphasize its napkin-like utility. This is war!

Except . . .

Except . . .

What we thought at the start is true. What seems like competition among brands is really competition among companies owned by the same corporate masters. Most napkin companies are owned by companies that own paper towel outlets. And vice versa.

So while the paper napkin continues to lose market share, it's losing market share to a cousin company in its massive conglomerate. Turns out the death of paper napkins will just result in the transfer of all the folks in the paper napkin division over to the paper towel division.

It's a mess, but not one big enough that you need super-absorbent paper towels to clean. Or a napkin that doubles as a paper towel.

I still blame millennials.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.