Recycled.. what?!?

So continuing with the theme of recycled products, there's a little something I wanted to add.

Recycled toilet paper. Yes, the very thought made me pause at first and it was a few weeks before I got over the initial concern. It just sounds wrong. But there's really nothing wrong with recycled toilet paper. Instead of cutting down trees to make it, they're recycling paper that would have otherwise been dumped into a landfill and turning it into... toilet paper.

To be honest, there's not much of a difference between recycled and "regular" (also known as virgin fiber) . I've always been a girl who likes her toilet paper nice, soft and fluffy. I'm not a fan of scratchy toilet paper, who would be? So I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that, while not as fluffy as I'm used to, recycled toilet paper is NOT rough or scratchy at all. There's barely a difference. If you're not convinced, try it yourself - some stores sell single rolls of toilet paper and you can test it out and see that it's not that bad.

I've also extended it to paper towels, and I will say that while they do feel quite a bit stiffer and rougher than what I'm used to, it's not enough to make me go back. I mean, I'm cleaning up a spill and it's going into the trash when I'm done - why do I need extra soft and fluffy virgin fiber paper towels when the recycled ones do the job just as well?

Plus just think of all the trees that aren't getting cut down as a result. According to this and this, if every household in this country used just ONE roll of recycled toilet paper, we would save close to 424, 000 trees. That's just one roll, and that's just toilet paper. Think of the possibilities...