I am currently in Finland visiting relatives, and it seems that every toilet in every bathroom has a hand-held bidet attached on the wall next to it. They are very practical and handy. But you don't really save toilet paper since you still need to use some toilet paper. Unless of course one spends an hour spraying their rear clean; in which case it would simply be easier and more resource efficient to take a shower. The ones in Finland are much better than the bidets used in Spain, which are basically big toilet-looking bowls that get filled with water. Again people typically clean their rear first with toilet paper before using the bidet, so not much toilet paper is saved.

I have to say that the model discussed above with spray jets and heated air seems a real luxury, but it also seems to me to be a little unnecessary and therefore a little bit of a waste of resources. I don't know how it functions in practice, so I don't know if toilet paper would really be needed or not. But if it really did make it unnecessary to use toilet paper, then maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing. That would depend on the amouny of energy required for the hot air and jet streams and where that energy was coming from (a wind farm or a coal plant?)

I do not agree that bidets are more eco-friendly than using toilet paper.

These use water and some use electricity. The use of electricity is an obvious non-requirement and waste of resources.

And while you do not have to use much water, we all know that many users will use more water than required.

Read this from the Daily Yomiuri Online in Japan (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20060421TDY04001.htm):

"n China, urban high-income earners reportedly have been snapping up top-of-the-line toilets from Japan as status symbols. This explains why many upscale hotels in China have heated toilets in their rooms, unlike in Europe and the United States.

Many users admit they become "addicted" once they try electric toilets. But the toilets require more electricity and water than conventional toilets, a new strain on energy resources that China can ill afford to ignore.

Japan also should be mindful of the drawbacks of high-tech toilets, which reportedly account for about 4 percent of an average home's electricity consumption. Toilets rank sixth in power usage after air conditioners, refrigerators, lightings, televisions and electric carpets.

Furthermore, they are the thirstiest water guzzlers in the home, responsible for 28 percent of average household water consumption. We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the volume of resources they require."

Using these bidets and "high-tech" toilets are not the way to go.

Composting and waterless toilets are the way to go. I'm a little biased but I know a lot about toilets.

I'm sure some of the fancier models are energy guzzlers. However, there are non-electric models available, and I do not think using a short stream of water to clean yourself is excessively wasteful.

I'm a big fan of composting toilets -- bidets seats can actually be installed above them.

Can a bidet be installed on a composting toilet?

Yes and no.

On a low water system, it is probably not a big deal.

However, some of our waterless models, such as the Envirolet Waterless Remote (AC), do not require an excess liquid drain. (An excess liquid drain would be for "excess" liquid that was not handled by the system via evaporation.) This is a big advantage in most applications.

Therefore, adding a bidet to it would alter the typical use by adding excess water. Therefore, the drain would most likely need to be added, depending on the number of users and how much extra water they added with this bidet, to allow for proper performance.

So, a bidet cannot go on all composting toilet systems.

One reason people opt for our waterless models that do not require a drain are the obvious environmental benefits, i.e., the use of NO water whatsoever and/or they may not be able (legally, that is) to create an acceptable drain site, i.e., leach field, for this "excess" liquid.

Us (and most other compost toilet companies) would probably not be in favour of adding a bidet to our systems in most cases.

Kind of a silly thing to debate - paper versus water. But I'll chime in since I lived in Japan for many years.

First thing, public toilets rarely have toilet paper in them. So that's why you see people handing out ad-laden portable tissue packs near train stations and the department stores around them.

Second thing, a lot of people still don't have central heating in their homes, so a heated toilet seat is a form of zone heating to compensate for the cold bathroom.

Third thing, most Japanese western-style toilets run water into a basin on the lid, so you can rinse your hands with water that's going into the tank - saving water (and of course energy to pump it).

Fourth thing, Japanese often exchange old newspaper for toilet paper - an exchange called "chirigami koukan". Consequently, the average household there is going to not only have more recycled content in their toilet paper, they're also, on average, going to have suboptimal toilet paper experience, since that recycled-content toilet paper is very rough.

Fifth thing, bidet's are far more hygienic than putting your hand down where your feces are. Japanese people are far more conscientious about hygiene, and caring about doing their part to keep it up (eg, they wear face masks when they have colds), than people in the U.S. So the proactive measures by people probably denecessitates all sorts of hand washing we do here because someone might have feces on their hand then turned a doorknob we just used.

Sixth thing, if you clean with a bidet, your underwear is going to be cleaner and last longer. That's also better for the environment.

Seventh thing, stop worrying about the environmental tradeoffs between toilet paper and bidets, especially without having supporting data. It's silly and inconsequential in the scheme of things.

I agree this is a sort of silly/fun debate. But, re: your 7th point ("Seventh thing, stop worrying about the environmental tradeoffs between toilet paper and bidets, especially without having supporting data. It's silly and inconsequential in the scheme of things.")... where is your supporting data for for points 1-6?

For example, "bidet's are far more hygienic than putting your hand down where your feces are." Is that true?

Also: "if you clean with a bidet, your underwear is going to be cleaner and last longer. " Again, true? Probably a lot of other factors involved in how clean ones underwear is...!

So, do YOU have data on the which has the higher impact?

There's lots of things that have not been scientifically scrutinized and quantified. Does that mean we shouldn't be concerned with ANY possible negative impact, if no one's gotten around to crunching the numbers on it yet?

No wonder the tobacco industry kept burying all those reports...

"where is your supporting data for for points 1-6?"

Like I said - I lived there a long time. You're more than welcome to live there for 3 1/2 years and see for yourself.

Or you can certainly look up things like "chirigami koukan" and the facts about zone heating, no toilet paper in public bathrooms, etc. Not sure why you'd doubt my account of it -- it was only to help explain why bidets and heated seats are popular over there.

"For example, "bidet's are far more hygienic than putting your hand down where your feces are." Is that true?"

Is it true that not touching your feces-laden anus is more hygienic than touching it? Uh, yeah, I think that's a safe assumption.

"Also: "if you clean with a bidet, your underwear is going to be cleaner and last longer. " Again, true? Probably a lot of other factors involved in how clean ones underwear is...!"

Um, if there's no feces residue, then you won't be having the old "brown streak". Common sense. You're welcome to try washing your anus to see what happens to your underwear if you doubt me.

"Is it true that not touching your feces-laden anus is more hygienic than touching it? Uh, yeah, I think that's a safe assumption."

Yes, that would be a safe assumption, of course. But,m when I use toilet paper, it's the paper, not my hand that is touching feces. And, then to be safe, I use soap & water to wash my hands.

And, I didn't doubt what you wrote. If you lived there, then you of course know some of what goes on there.

Just like how because my father has sold composting toilets since the early 70s before I was born, I know a thing or two about all types of toilets.

Joe,

We haven't the time for "safe assumptions", "common sense", or your personal accounts of things, seeing as you're not a trained anthropological researcher.

You distincly asked for us to provide "supporting data".

We're waiting.

"Yes, that would be a safe assumption, of course. But,m when I use toilet paper, it's the paper, not my hand that is touching feces. And, then to be safe, I use soap & water to wash my hands."

If it were truly clean, then you wouldn't need to wash your hands. If one were going to go the effort to compare the two alternatives, one would need to factor in the hot water, the soap, the faucet, the basin, the counter, the pipes, and the space for all of it -- all of which are unnecessary if you're using a bidet with a dryer.

My point is there's probably very little out there in terms of concrete data on lifecycle analysis of the average roll of toilet paper, and especially not a specific brands of toilet paper. Then I also doubt there's little information on how much toilet paper is used per person, as well as specific, individual data.

Then you'd have to factor in general energy sources versus specific energy sources - eg, I use wind power for my home, so the marginal environmental cost of using electricity to heat a toilet seat or water for a bidet is zero.

Plus, again, it's not simply an environmental issue but one also of hygiene, personal comfort, health, etc.

And even if some clarity could be brought to all those factors, they really wouldn't matter much in the scheme of things -- compared to things like heating and lighting interior spaces, fueling and using other resources for transportation, etc.

Chopping down trees to clean your butt, now thats ridiculous. I think in a debate between toilet paper and a bidet, the bidet wins.

on a parenting forum i spend time at a lot of moms have decided to not use toilet paper at all, they keep cloth in a basket near the toilet and use a small amount of water and wipe themselfs clean then put cloth into a diaper pale or something (some have two pales one for number 1 and one for number 2) then they wash the cloths when they do the laundrey. they say it feels much better than paper and is better for the enviroment
i don't feel comfortabel doing this since i go to a laundreymat to wash my clothes and i am self consious but it sounds like a good way to do things, id unno how it compares with water used to wash them and energy for that, if it is really better to use cloth but i bet it feels better

you dont have to use freshly killed trees

abnd while i think it's neat to use a bidet, all i can say is 1) this is the most scatalogical thread i've ever seen here, and 2) sure better to use a bidet than to use japanese Nara period toilet paper

When we're all old and gray, we'll remember this as the Great Bidet War of 2006!

I have a consideration regarding toilet paper that I haven't seen brought up: Toilet paper is made of carbon sucked out of the atmosphere via trees. Assuming that we can process trees into the TP using renewable energy and transport that TP from the plant to your home using renewable fuels, utilizing TP instead of bidets can potentially reduce global warming! Not to mention the fact that the TP along with your feces can be converted into bio-gas which is a renewable energy source.

Since potable water is a scarce resource, it can be wasteful and unsustainable to adopt them en mass. If, however, your bidet is fueled by collected rainwater, then I'd say bidets are probably OK.

As far as hygiene is concerned, it would seem to me that spraying a jet of water about at such an unclean object would unleash more fecal coliform bacteria into the air surrounding the bidet than would a simple wipe with soft, organic, carbon-based, biodegradable material then dropping the result gently into the effluent.

-Riskable
http://riskable.com
"I have a license to kill -9"

Bizare. Especially the suggestion that us toilet paper users have a brown streak on our undies.
Sainsbury's 100% recycled toilet paper is very soft, and as cheap as any of the other stuff. What with the need to conserve water in Southern UK at the moment, a bidet seems like a mad suggestion.

"What with the need to conserve water in Southern UK at the moment, a bidet seems like a mad suggestion."

The flow rate on this bidet:
http://www.totousa.com/admin/upload/pdfspc/824-1002.pdf

is 0.106 to 0.291 gal/min.

US regs with respect to faucet flow rates dictate that new faucet flow rates can't exceed 2.5 gpm at 80 psi or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=13050

Proper sanitation guidelines say that one must wash hands for a minimum of 20 seconds.

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/bcsfp/washing.htm

So, using the low end of flow rates for faucets (2.2 gallon per minute), one consumes .73 gallons of water in 20 seconds.

Taking the high end of bidet flow rates, it would take over 2 1/2 minutes to use that much water.

In the conventional process, paper (which requires a lot of water to make) is used both at the toilet and to dry one's hands (unless there's a hand dryer).

Wouldn't you still wash your hands after using a bidet? I know I would.

"Wouldn't you still wash your hands after using a bidet? I know I would."

I don't know. Theoretically it could be a touch-free process, so there'd really be no need - especially at home.

using water for cleaning fecal remains on anus, is more hygienic than using toilet paper. toilet paper cannot remove 100% fecal remains on the anus, however water can. So you have a cleaner anus which is odor free. the analogy would be that if there's some sand or dust on your car and you try removing that dust or sand with a cloth, you won't be able to remove all of it, but if you throw a water hose on the dust or sand, all of it will be wiped away completely.

Are you experienced? Washing your butt with water is the way to go. If you give it an honest try you will never want to go back to just toilet paper, except maybe to dry. Most modern bidets use very little water to clean. Here is an interesting site on the environmental impact of using toilet paper. http://www.phess.ca/English/Environmental%201.htm
Save a tree!