Dave and I have been on a journey to become more green and organic for almost two years now. We understand we can't expect each one of you to make the switches to a natural lifestyle over night, but we recently learned about what is going on in the toilet paper market and just HAD to share it with you. Do you want to save 400,000 trees?? Who wouldn't, right? Is your luxury toilet paper destroying forests? Wait til you hear this, pulled from multiple research sources (including GreenPeace USA, Green and Natural Parenting, Consumer Reports, Washington Post, and the New York Times).
Many of us may never even think about the environmental consequences of toilet paper and if we do we may think it is not a very big deal in the grand scheme of things. If we are thinking along those lines, we are thinking wrong.
I am sure you are all familiar with the soft, cushiony toilet paper brands that are thrown at us via TV commercials and ads all the time…brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra. Especially with the latest craze of "ultra plush" or "ultra soft".. If you want to feel as though you are wiping your behind with a cloud then these are the brands for you.
Unfortunately this article from the New York Times shows that luxury and softness has a price.
"...millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them."
Ugh! We are destroying forests just so we can have something super soft to wipe our backsides. That is the very definition of vain and wasteful. Dave and I would have to agree with Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and waste expert with the Natural Resource Defense Council when he said “No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper.”
How can we justify such a thing when we can use/buy toilet paper made from recycled paper products? Is our bum worth that price?
The cost of “white” toilet paper is also high as tons of chlorine bleach and water must be used to bleach the paper pulp. This is highly unnecessary in our opinion...
Charmin, Kleenex, Cottonelle, Quilted Northern and Scott are among the toilet papers and tissues that do the most harm to forests and the environment, according to a new report by GreenPeace. The non-profit research group evaluated dozens of brands of toilet paper, facial tissue, paper, towels, and napkins according to three criteria:
- How much recycled content they contained
Using 100% recycled content helps protect forests because it significantly reduces the demand for trees, especially trees coming from native forests.
- How much of that was post-consumer waste
To get the top ranking, at least 50% post-consumer waste needed to be used in manufacturing the product.
- How the paper was bleached
The top-ranked products are not bleached using chlorine, which can create the toxic byproduct dioxin.
So what can you do? Buy recycled, unbleached toilet paper. According to GreenPeace, Americans could save more than 400,000 trees if each family bought a roll of recycled toilet paper — just once. We highly recommend each of you to visit GreenPeace's site for their Pocket Size Tissue Guide which you can download and print out to keep with you in your wallet or purse so you can remember what brands to look for, which to avoid, and chemicals to avoid, too!: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/forests/tissueguide. Also, please please PLEASE take the time on that same page to click "Take Action Now" and send a quick letter to Proctor&Gamble asking them to stop killing the hundreds of years old forests around the world. (Dave and I did this today!! Share with your friends and family!) Inside their pocket tissue guide, GreenPeace recommends some of the following brands as being the most eco friendly choices:
Green Forest
Seventh Generation (the brand Dave and I use most often)
Seventh Generation (the brand Dave and I use most often)
Trader Joe’s brand
And of course there is always the option to use cloth. This option extends past the use of cloth instead of toilet paper. Try to use cloth diapers, cloth baby wipes, even cloth menstrual pads or a Diva Cup. I admit that even I have not made the leap to cloth for everything for our family yet, but we are still on our journey to being an ALL-natural family. Make a healthy and clean choice for YOUR family. It's easy when you can buy recycled, unbleached toilet paper.
