Americans Wipe Their Butts with Non-Renewable Trees

[subsuelo]

Environmentalists are increasingly pushing for people in the United States to change their toilet paper buying habits, in recognition of the fact that the soft, fluffy toilet paper widely preferred in the United States for home use can only be made by logging wild forests throughout the Western Hemisphere.

"No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper," said Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resource Defense Council.

Toilet paper can easily be made from recycled paper, but only at the cost of a coarser final product. Manufacturers admit that the primary factor that keeps them making toilet paper out of freshly cut trees is the fact that standing trees yield longer fibers than recycled material does. Longer fibers, in turn, make for softer, fluffier toilet paper.

Environmental groups estimate that depending on the brand, between 25 and 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper comes from U.S. or South American tree farms, with the remainder coming from wild forests. These forests are ecologically important not only as ways to remove greenhouse gases from the air, but as water purification systems and habitat providers for thousands of different life forms.

It's not just the previously logged, second-growth forests being cut to make pulp for toilet paper, either; a major source of pulp for the U.S. toilet paper market is Canada's endangered, old-growth boreal forest. According to an estimate from Greenpeace, Cottonelle and Scott parent company Kimberly Clark acquires up to 22 percent of its pulp from companies that log these forests. The company admits to sourcing 14 percent of its pulp from the Canadian boreal forests.

http://www.naturalnews.com/026627_paper_toilet_paper_forests.html">Natural News - read more

[AndyTiedye]

I Hadn't Noticed the Recycled Stuff Being Any Coarser

The really fluffy stuff tends to fall apart in use, so I tend to avoid it anyway.

[AndyTiedye]

1. .

duplicate post

[FreakinDJ]

2. Most other countrys use a Baday

[lindisfarne]

4. There's a device you can add to your toilet to make it work like a bidet - save on TP & problems

caused by it. Most Americans are freaked out by bidets, even though they clean far better.

[lindisfarne]

3. Consumer Reports did an review of TP; it was kind of 2-part because some were reformulated,

If I recall correctly, Marcal (made of recycled paper) got their "Best Buy" rating (among the cheapest) and competed well with the non-recycled brands.

Please add details if you have the issues at home; I don't.

[hunter]

5. I have to say it -- what kind of toilet paper can you make out of hemp?

:P

[rurallib]

7. let's see. You'd have to smoke it after use as TP else

if you smoked it before use as TP it would be gone when TP was needed.

[GliderGuider]

10. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase

"That's really good shit, man!"
:hide:

[NYC_SKP]

6. I hate white, soft, falls apart TP. I like the rougher, tougher, sturdier, brown recycled stuff.

This Western obsession with makeup, fashion, big cars, and soft bleached TP is for assholes.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. Back to corncobs, I say. And since...

there's no more Sears catalog, old phonebooks and junk mail.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. I've heard the last of Australia's giant Mountain Ash trees are being logged for TP ...

http://www.baddevelopers.green.net.au/Docs/talltrees.htm

http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780812975598-2

[kestrel91316]

11. I use 100% recycled tissues. Can't find 100% recycled toilet paper.

[izquierdista]

12. Irony of the Cold War

I find it ironic that the winners of the Cold War were the ones with soft, fluffy TP. If the war had turned hot and they had to endure a stretch of Soviet quality TP, they would have surrendered in a week. After you've gone through one roll of Soviet TP, you can take any punishment that the world has to dish out!