I was walking down CVS Pharmacy the other evening and saw toilet paper labeled as 100% recycled. We all use those white, soft rolls daily, which means plenty of resources must go into producing them, right? So I felt a need to get to the bottom line.
Since we are not equipped with feline cleaning equipment, we need to use the next best tools
You may not have made the connection, but toilet paper is made from paper, and about 98% of toilet paper is made from virgin sources. In fact about 7 million trees are consumed annually to take care of our #2 duties. Sure a sick person may use toilet paper to blow his or her nose, mom or dad may use it to clean up a spill, or teenagers may dress in black and under the cover of darkness layer a victim’s home with TP (In America this is a prank called TPing someone’s home…I must admit, it’s kind of fun), but for the most part those bleached white rolls are used in the lavatory setting.
It’s kind of strange that we use living organisms as majestic as trees to ensure adequate levels of posterior hygiene.
- Europe flushes approximately 60 million rolls of toilet paper daily.
- The United States uses 36.5 billions rolls of toilet paper annually, which represents at least 15 million trees pulped (www.treehugger.com)
- US production also consumes 473,587,500,000 (473.5 billion) gallons of water
- 253,000 tons of chlorine is used for bleaching purposes.
Add on the resource costs to transfer TP tolls across the globe and one can see the asinine amounts of resources used to produce an item that’s used once and disposed of forever. Yeah we can’t really reuse toilet paper too effectively.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reports that approximately 400,000 trees would be saved annually if each American household replaced only one roll of TP made from virgin, pulped trees with TP made from 100 percent recycled products. That’s significant.
So after grabbing a roll of 100% recycled toilet paper from CVS I inspected it, and just as I thought it was rougher than some of the softer virgin products. It was also 1-ply, so you may use more to maintain that comfortable hand to bum barrier. You do sacrifice quality for the environment in this case, but a 2 ply 100% recycled content product is available in the market. Check your stores, buy a single roll if possible and give it a test run. You can also do a web search and purchase online. For commercial applications, ask your vendor to supply you with a sample of 100% recycled TP. Other alternative, base products such as hemp will be coming online, but in the short term, this solution is less bad.
One reason Europe may be using less TP, is their use of bidets…. if you wash yourself, you need less TP, which would be mainly for the drying. They do this in the middle east as well. Maybe we should start installing bidets in our households? 36.5 BILLION versus 60 million is an embarrassment! People in europe eat less, use less toilet paper, walk more, are not as obese, enjoy life, and live longer!!! We know what we’re doing wrong!! Why can’t we take action to fix it?! Maybe it’s our obsession with living a life of convenience and luxury…. that is NOT what the American dream is about.
BTW, I recently (one month ago) purchased the 8-pack of 100% recycled TP (from CVS mind you) and I find it satisfactory. Besides the horrible packaging and the lack of squishiness (is that a word?) of the roll, it’s not that much different from the Charmin’s Ultra Soft that I used to get… I don’t think our bottoms care too much about the degree of softness… unless you’re having a medical problem and going to the toilet very frequently… or making a mess of things… which might be a completely different problem…. :]
What about the baby wipes that many people are using now? There are flushable ones. I know this because I take a pack with me when I travel, especially to under-developed countries.
Thanks Reham, actually Europe’s 60 million roll usage is per day, so that’s about 21 billion rolls per year, which is still under the US average. What’s more profound is that Europe’s population is at around 830 million people and the US is around 300 million. I think the root cause for this numbers gap lies at Outback Steak House, Cheese Cake Factory, and #4 Jumbo sized! I’m hungry.
Eco Soft brand is not bad! 100% recyclable and most importantly soft. The only problem is I can’t find a way to buy less than 96 rolls at a time.