My name is Suzie, or Marcia, as you like. In August of 2019 I found myself standing in the cold water of the upper Sacramento River in Northern California. Many people in my big family were camping there as we had done since I was a child. I’ve known this river, and the big trees here, a long, long time. My mind turned to the recent article I had read about clear-cutting forests in Canada for toilet paper.

I had certainly seen evidence of clear-cutting in flights over Oregon for years, but I was pretty shocked to read that the boreal forests in Canada were being cut too. These forests are rich in carbon sequestering trees and soils and provide not only the beauty of nature but critical habitat for a myriad of wildlife and other plants, lichens and mycelium. It takes decades for newly planted trees to develop the carbon sequestering these older trees and forests have.

Back at home I started investigating ways to decrease my toilet paper use.I discovered that women use about 65 percent of all toilet paper to wipe after peeing. That’s a lot of trees when you add it all up! I ended up buying a six pack of plastic (Ugh!) containers with pop tops that were large enough to hold about 5 quarts of water. I then bought a few selections of both cotton and bamboo small cloths to test wiping with after peeing. The bamboo squares worked great and looked like an individual piece of toilet paper, so they made sense to me. They are also very soft and sensual and environmentally much more eco-friendly than cotton.

Once used I simply put them into the container to soak. When I ran out of the 30 cloths I drained the container and tossed the small cloths into my regular wash. Bamboo shouldn’t have bleach added when washing so I just washed them with any load. They came out of the dryer and didn’t stick to any of my clothes. I stacked them and started over again. They were so simple to use! I couldn’t believe what money I was saving too. And then Covid hit the world and toilet paper became a hot commodity. But I didn’t need to buy very much of it! Such a great thing! Two years later I started to develop a better container. To start a new company at my age seemed pretty crazy, but I had given a few of of the early prototypes to girlfriends and my daughters and their experiences were positive. So here I am, moving forward.

Having been a serial entrepreneur for most of my life I find it hard to put aside an idea, especially if you feel it will help with a crisis like we’re facing. We need to make it our culture to take care of the earth. We, all across the earth, will be required to shift our lifestyles to much, much more sustainability oriented goods and practices. In fact, sustainability will not be sufficient. Regeneration and circularity will be the focus of the future. Not only do we need to regenerate we need to actively save the expanses of nature we have now so that carbon can be sequestered, and stored, and habitats can be maintained across diverse sectors of the globe.

I’ll say it again: We need to make it our culture to take care of the earth.

I am hoping you will join this movement!