Sustainable paper alternatives, made from bamboo, hemp, and agricultural waste, offer promising solutions to conserve forests and reduce our environmental footprint for future generations.
claimed or scrapped from agricul- ture). You might even find some of these mixed with bamboo, cotton, or even recycled paper for an eco-friend- lier product. How are you exercising your con - servation muscles when it comes to paper? I do still use Reel toilet pa - per (and I love it), dry my laundry with wool dryer balls, and subscribe to magazines online. Books, though, are my paper weakness, a penchant I plan to mitigate this year by using a bunch of old books destined for a land- fill to create an outfit for a trash-to- fashion fundraising event for the local Kootenai Environmental Alliance. N
sends up new stalks of bamboo as it grows out through the soil. In my 20’s, I lived for a short time in North Car- olina, and there was a bamboo stand in the back yard of our rental house. Without continual management, it had taken over half the yard, and the stalks were thick and hardy. It was beautiful, but I didn’t envy the chal- lenge it presented for the next tenant. Bamboo plants regenerate quick- ly and reach maturity in 3-5 years – a comparable stand of paper pulp trees would take 50-100 years. It also doesn’t generally require pesti- cides and is one of the fastest-grow- ing plants on the planet. Once fully grown, a bamboo stand can be har- vested annually for 40-70 years, whereas trees can only be harvested once then re-planted. Bamboo fibers
have a durable natural strength and can be easily made soft and absor- bent. It’s also naturally hypoallergen- ic, gentle on the skin, and gentle on the environment due to being easy to process, able to be recycled multiple times, and clean and quick to break down in a landfill. You can find bamboo on the mar - ket today in the form of toilet paper, paper towels, toothbrushes, sanitary pads, straws, kitchen wares, furni- ture, towels, bedding, clothing, phone cases, charcoal, flooring, storage, tea (bamboo leaf), fuel pellets and much more. Other top tree paper alternatives are cotton, hemp (also fast-growing and resource-efficient), bagasse (sug - arcane fibrous residue waste from processing sugar), and straw (re-
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