In the last post, Eco-friendly Flu Fighting, I noted that I’m sick today. Since I tend to blog along the lines of how my day is going, it’s pretty much sick day here at Best Green Home Tips.

Right now let’s take a look at earth-friendly options for tissues.

Your most earth friendly tissue option are cloth handkerchiefs; but there are pros and cons.

Pros of cloth handkerchiefs:

• Reusable.
• Cost effective; much cheaper than buying oodles of tissue.
• Often won’t dry out your nose as much as paper tissue.
• Especially softer on a child’s nose.
• You can use them plain, or drop some essential oil on them for treatment.
• Can be used as cleaning cloths when they get too old.

Cons of cloth handkerchiefs:

• Washing! Seriously, how much laundry do you want to do while you’re sick?
• Can be icky.
• Kids, in my experience, don’t tend to handle cloth tissues as well. They leave them laying around, and or try to toss them in the garbage.
• You may need to purchase a lot in a bigger family, and if everyone wants their own, you’ll need to choose specific colors or monograms.

The next best tissue is recycled.

There aren’t too many pros and cons here, the basic gist is that recycled tissue is a good reuse product if you want paper tissue, but they’re not as green as cloth; because obviously they don’t last as long.

Options:

Organic cotton flannel handkerchiefs: Packaged in a brown paper bag. Available in your choice of natural colour or hand-dyed purple.

Colorgrown Organic Cotton Flannel Hankies

Organic Cotton HANKIES – Singles

100% Recycled Seventh Generation Tissues; Hypo-allergenic; Whitened without chemicals containing chlorine; No added dyes; No added fragrances

Green Forest Facial Tissue: 100% Recycled Paper; Whitened Without Chlorine; Minimum 40% PCR Content

Gaiam Facial Tissue: 100% recycled paper with a minimum of 20% post-consumer content; hypoallergenic, unscented and bleached with environmentally safe sodium hydrosulfite and hydrogen peroxide.