Little Fluffy Clouds

OK, maybe not, but today I have made fluffy clouds at work (I have a dead serious job) out of cotton wool balls. I did however say to some people that we would have to buy some as I don't have nay at home. They were curious as to why and what I used instead.

To answer this with the long story here goes! A while ago I decided I would like to minimise my disposable cosmetics paraphenalia. I realise it would be greener still not to use it at all, but hey ho, I like to look nice, and i try to do it in the most responsible and sustainable way possible, so I am not going to feel bad about that at this point in time. I switched away from traditional make-up remover which comes in plastic bottles and started using baby face by my favourite shop!. I then removed it using a muslin cloth which i was given with some Liz Earle products i was given for a birthday pressie. As this worked well I bought some organic cotton muslin and now have a collection of muslin squares for make-up removal (we only do washing when there is a full load, so things can hang around a bit, so i needed a stack of them).

This worked well for ages, but I was still plagued by the notion that i was using toner on cotton wool. Yes, I had reduced the impact, but not eliminated it. Then I started using reusable menstrual wear and started to think that i could use reusable cotton wool pads. So, I now don't keep cotton wool pads/balls/roll etc at home. I have a few sets of reusable pads for make up removal, some organic cotton, some polyester cotton mix, and some hemp, and maybe some bamboo. I haven't tried them all so I can't contrast them.

This throws it's own dilemmas at me:
1) is it better for the environment to wash and reuse or dispose of somehting small and biodegradable?
I think in my case it is most definitely better to wash and reuse, as i stated we only wash when the load is full, we use soapnuts or occasionally ecover, we wash at 30 degrees, we don't tumble dry

2) even though cotton production is highly unethical in many respects, for the people that produce it it is better that someone buys it than no-one, not buying it doesn;t help the farmers really. Social cost vs environmental cost

3) I had nothing to use to keep my eyes cleansed separately when i had an eye infection! (this is small fry!)

4) i bought some nail varnish remover pads in a plastic pot. I am suspecting this is worse than me having some cotton wool and a bottle of nail varnish remover? Is plastic waste worse than cotton? The ethical dilemmas abound!