Save 1 Million Trees, Switch Your TP

I recently received a box of products from Marcal's new line called Small Steps. In the box were toilet paper, paper towels, facial tissue and two types of napkins, all made from 100% recycled paper.

Marcal uses paper collected form curbs in residential neighborhoods, from small blue baskets in office buildings, unwanted junk mail and printer’s waste. They’re also made without chlorine bleach, are hypoallergenic. Their motto is “Paper made from paper, not from trees™.” I love that! They’ve been saving trees since 1950 right here in the USA.

I’ve tried to cut down on how much paper comes into the house, but we still use some so I was excited to try a new brand of recycled paper products.

The facial tissue was the first one I opened and it was well timed because shortly after opening it I ended watching a real tear jerker (The Other Sister). The tissues did a great job of holding up and not falling apart when they got wet.

Now the toilet paper I was a little weary of, it’s only 1 ply. It says “strong and absorbent” on the package, but come on, it’s only 1 ply! I try to be green, but I still by 2 ply. So with some hesitation I put it the roll and gave it a try. And you know what? It really is strong and absorbent! The 1 ply roll has 1,000 sheets and I have a feeling it’ll last just as long as my old 2 ply roll.

The paper towels came in a U-size-it roll which I like best. I try not use paper towels much (1 roll lasts several months) and when I do I usually don’t want a whole big sheet. Since I don’t use them very much I wasn’t really sure how I was going to review them. Using them just so I could write about them still seemed kind of wasteful to me, then my dog was kind enough to give me reason. I can tell you that yes; they are in fact strong and absorbent as well. They also don’t shred to pieces when scrubbing the carpet. And I’ll just leave it at that.

Now I ran into the same problem with the napkins as I did with the paper towels, except more so. We don’t use paper napkins at all because we’ve switched to cloth. But then I noticed the bag that the everyday napkins come in had a drawstring closure. I thought this was great because I am constantly wishing I had napkins in the car (see: 2 boys) and this bag will be perfect to keep in my car. This will keep them organized and clean and I won’t have to worry about them falling all over the place and being wasted because they’ve been stepped on.

And fine I admit it; the dinner napkins will get used on days when I’ve forgotten (again) to wash the cloth ones.

All in all I really liked the Small Steps products. After all they do combine 2 of my favorite things; made from recycled material and made in the USA. I also really liked that they’re website has a store finder because until I got the products I hadn’t heard of them before. But I’m very glad I did!