Getting Creative with … uh, Toilet Paper?

No, this is not a story about crafting

If you visit Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, or any other exotic location in the Mexican Riviera and are adventurous enough to get outside the tourist zone, you’ll notice some differences in how Mexicans and Americans do things.

One small difference you’ll only notice if you use a public restroom, as I did.

I gotta go! There’s the bathroom, thank goodness! Right now I gotta go so bad I can’t spend time asking total strangers, “ ¿Donde esta el baño?” Besides, it’s embarrassing.

I head in, note with gratitude that everything seems pretty clean, and ensconce myself on the, oh yeah, it’s called the “inodoro.”

Finished and feeling better, I reach out for the toilet paper, which is next to me on a little shelf. (What is toilet paper in Spanish? I don’t know.) There’s very little left, and as I roll it off, I discover something: When you get to the end of the roll, instead of the cardboard tube you expect to see, there’s another little roll tightly wound and stuffed into the center, with its own little paper wrapper.

Nifty! The Mexicans don’t have recycling down yet, at least to judge from the trash bags I see at curbside here and there, but they’ve got TP down. No cardboard tubes to throw out, and no having to buy tissues that get shredded in my purse and discarded even before they get used. Instead, a small gift to keep in my purse to blow my nose on or in case the next baño isn’t as well-stocked as this one is.

Exiting the baño, I feel … “agradecida.” Well, sort of.

If I could talk the manufacturers of toilet paper in the U.S. into putting these little TP rolls inside the big ones and stop using cardboard tubes, I would be the inspiration for them to keep 17 billion toilet paper tubes each year out of dumpsters.

I feel sort of environmentally friendly, too.