By Thomas Kelly
Can it be true that the wonderful, infused with hand lotion, three-ply toilet paper is causing more environmental damage than the gas guzzling Hummer? Americans have an insatiable desire to use the softest, plushest toilet paper on our most delicate parts, and it may be flushing our pristine forest down the john.
Over 98% of the toilet paper sold in the United States comes from virgin wood, and most of it is from the boreal forest of northern Canada. Almost two-thirds of that nation’s 140,000 species of plants, animals and other organisms live in the forest and some are becoming endangered by the rapid deforestation of the area. In Europe only 40% of toilet paper is manufactured from virgin wood, which is wood that comes from trees just cut down. Almost 60% of European toilet tissue is from recycled paper and pulp compared to only 2% for the United States showing a huge disparity.
Greenpeace, the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), and other environmental groups are launching public relation initiatives to make Americans more aware of the impact toilet paper has on the environment. “Using toilet paper made from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving a large SUV in terms of global warming pollution.” states Allan Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the NRDC. He goes on to say that “The production of toilet paper has a significant environmental impact, not only because of the amount of virgin wood used, but also from the quantity of toxic chemicals used in pulp manufacturing.”
Kimberly-Clark, the largest paper products manufacturer in the United States, reported a 40% rise in sales of their luxury brands toilet paper and the company spent over $80 million in advertising. Dave Dixon, a company spokesman, said “Toilet paper from recycled fiber has been on the market for years, but Americans are unwilling to buy them. They feel that recycled paper is too rough and not strong enough. When it comes to bath tissue, Americans like the softness and strength that virgin fibers provide. It’s the quality the consumers in America have come to expect.” Greenpeace is trying to change our consumer habits with the public relations blitz.
In recent newspaper articles for the New York Times and the Guardian Unlimited, a British paper, environmental reporters have written about the “tenderness of the American buttock” and the plight of the Canadian forest. Greenpeace has launched their Kleercut campaign to try to convince Kimberly-Clark and other major paper manufacturers to change from using virgin wood from old-growth logs to more recycled materials. Kleercut has shown it may be working. Many universities, including Harvard, the University of Florida and California-Berkeley, have changed from using Kimberly-Clark products to using Marcal toilet tissue, America’s oldest paper products manufacturer of recycled materials. For the first time, Marcal is investing in a $30 million dollar advertising campaign for eco-friendly toilet paper.
Changing from using toilet paper manufactured from virgin wood to tissue using recycled paper products will take time. So will the toughening up of our delicate private parts by using slightly rougher (European strength) paper. Maybe changing our use to a more eco-friendly toilet paper will allow us to drive our mammoth, gas hog SUV’s with a little less guilt and help save the planet by using less forest land.
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Save Trees? Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Get serious and add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: "if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn't wipe it off with paper, would you? You'd wash it off” Available at www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without felling guilty. It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. And after using one of these you won't know how you lasted all those years with wadded up handfuls of toilet paper. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but please remember that in the big picture the industrial water users always far exceed the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways.
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