I used to use (and love cypress) because it helps so much with humidity. I recently switched to using paper products so that I can feed all of my ball pythons in their enclosures without worrying that they'll ingest substrate. I've tried newspaper and brown shipping paper rolls. The shipping paper is nicer, but isn't free like newspaper. Then again, I've only gone through a single $5 roll in about 3 months with my 5 ball pythons. So the cost is minimal. My only gripe is that most of them have taken to going under the paper rather than using their hides. Kind of defeats the purpose. =)