Cookie Wars

I have a soft spot, sweet tooth, special love, whatever you want to call it, for chocolate chip cookies. I generally eat them at least once a day.

Over the past couple of years I've gone back and forth in trying to find just the right cookie that accomplishes multiple personal goals. When I buy cookies, I look for ones that are:

• Affordable: I'm not a cookie snob, per se, just looking for something I can enjoy. I am, however, always interested in saving money when I can, so I don't necessarily need to go with the high end luxury brands


• Tasty: Again, basic chocolate chip cookies satisfy me just as much as the fancier brands, so as long as the cookies taste good, I'm on board.


• Packaged Properly: This has been the Holy Grail of my search. I hate having to buy cookies that come in plastic cartons that are not recyclable. It's just such a waste, environmentally speaking and it's something that I would like to avoid where possible.

Now for my thoughts on a few of the major brands that can be found in most markets...

Nabisco's Chips Ahoy and Keebler's Chips Deluxe, among others, are guilty of having wasteful packaging. For each brand, a thin plastic sleeve surrounds a rigid plastic carton. Quite shameful. It's unfortunate, too, because I happen to enjoy both brands of cookies, and they both fall on the cheaper end of the cookie spectrum (I think Chips Deluxe may be the cheapest of all major brands), but I just don't want to have to live with the guilt of throwing away packaging that will sit in a landfill for thousands of years just so I can get my sugar fix.

Fortunately, I have found two options that are affordable, tasty, and packaged properly:

1. Famous Amos: These cookies come in a cardboard, recyclable (or at least biodegradable) box and a foil bag which is at least tolerable. The cookies are really good, and the price is a bit higher than Chips Deluxe and Chips Ahoy, but not dramatically so.


2. Trader Joe's Crispy Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies: Though I don't necessarily think these are the best tasting of all the cookie options, they are satisfying, they don't break the bank, and they come in a recyclable (and/or reusable) plastic bowl, which is a pretty good alternative to the non-recyclable packaging mentioned earlier.

So if you're like me... a cookie lover with a conscience(?)... I'd suggest Famous Amos and Trader Joe's brand cookies. But if you have any feedback about other brands that meet these criteria that I should try out, feel free to drop a comment. That'd be sweet!

How to Feel Good about Toilet Paper

Normally, toilet paper is not something that the average Joe Consumer thinks about on a daily basis. But I found a way to actually feel good about the humble TP roll:

By buying recycled.

All these years I've bought brands like Procter and Gamble's Charmin for use in the bathroom. But on a whim, I bought recycled toilet paper from Trader Joe's and I actually kinda feel good about myself. Granted, the Charmin TP has a better texture to it, and it may be cheaper (I'm not sure), but at what cost am I harming the environment so I can have a luxury tissue take care of you know what. Scary to think about how many trees are chopped down to produce something that has a useful existence of about 5 seconds.

The advantages of buying recycled toilet paper are many, including:

-Saving trees
-Minimizing or eliminating bleach from the production process, since bleach is a harsh chemical
-Minimizing or eliminating mercury, which is a by-product in some toilet paper production processes
-Giving good reason for people to recycle... since townships often actually make money on recycling, there's an added incentive to recycle more in order to give back to municipalities (well, that's my theory at least)
-And even the packaging on Trader Joe's (and perhaps other brands) is biodegradable in 18 months (or so it says on the plastic)

Once again, we need to stop thinking like we live in a disposable world since what we've been doing has just been dragging us into a dangerous spiral economically, environmentally, and socially. Time to think differently, from our head down to our feet, and other stopovers in between.

I suggest for anybody interested in purchasing recycled toilet paper, to check out this informative NRDC page, which gives an insightful comparison of various brands.

Thanks for your time and happy wiping! (C'mon, I have a picture of a toilet plunger on this blog for Pete's sakes... you didn't actually expect me to leave without some sort of bathroom humor, did you?)