TheMondayGarden.com

USE LESS PAPER - SAVE THE TREES AND RIVERS The issues around the environmental destructiveness of paper products for short-term use is well known. Trees get cut down, which greatly disturbs the critters living in them, among other things. Paper pulp gets bleached and processed and the chemical by-products can be a major water pollution problem.

You can opt for the Internet instead of paper newspapers and catalogs. The catalogs that people in the USA finding their mail are especially destructive of Canadian forests. You can also replace paper towels and paper facial tissues with cloth.

PICTURE: Sarongs, wash cloths, flat-weave dish towels and cotton handkerchiefs (without cat).

PAPER TOWELS: When you must have a one-use towel for a dirty cleaning job and to line the microwave, at least use the unbleached brown towels. For most jobs, from wrapping the lettuce in the refrigerator to cleaning the counter, a stack of wash clothes works as well (or much better).

Further, an 8-roll pack of paper towels costs about $7-10; for the same money or less, you can buy 8- 10 wash cloths that will out last the towels by years. (Get even more economical: use the new wash clothes in the bathroom for a year; when they start to look a little ragged, rotate them into the kitchen and buy new ones for the bath -- this way your kitchen clothes are almost "free").

PICTURE: Terry cloth towels stacked on the kitchen window ledge by the sink; blue bottles are recycled wine bottles used as watering cans.

PAPER "FACIAL TISSUES": SAVE $100 A YEAR; STOP RED NOSES: Paper tissues are not better for you than cloth. I learned from a neighbor that the red around the nose of a person with a cold comes from the fibers of the paper irritating the skin.

All shoppers know that the "facial tissues" consume somewhere between $1 and $3 A WEEK out of the food budget. That's an awesome $50 to $150 a year, which is real money, at least to me. You can buy 100% cotton handkerchiefs for about $1 a piece. So, for $14, you can get enough for every day even if you only do the wash every 2 weeks and the handkerchiefs last for years. For around the house, or when you have a cold and need a lot of tissues, save money by ripping up an old 200-count bed sheet into fringed squares. One old bed sheet will yield a lifetime supply of cloth tissues for use around the house for all the things for which you use tissues. (hint: fill your old paper tissue holder with cloth tissues).

BATH TOWELS- REDUCE YOUR LAUNDRY COST BIG TIME: You might not have noticed this but those nice thick terry cloth bath towels are one of the bulkiest items in your wash -- causing you to have to do extra loads. Further, they take longer to dry, costing you more money to run the dryer. A major part of the water and power used for washing and drying goes to the towels.

SAVE WATER, ENERGY AND UPDATE YOUR BATH: Switch to a flat-weave cotton bath towels or even better, flat sheets of pure cotton. Plain old cotton is very absorbent, feels great and dries fast. Reduce your laundry by a load or two a month (or a week if there are several people in your family); and cut drying time.

I personal use cotton or rayon sarongs -- they are inexpensive, look great hanging in the bathroom and double as bathrobes. Cotton wears best, but rayon ones are readily available and look and feel great. Alternatively, you can buy fancy flat-weave towels (get the unbleached ones!) or buy 100% cotton by the yard and fringe or hem it.