Tip on TP: Both Bottom Friendly and Forest Friendly
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.28.07
Yesterday Matthew noted that "the toilet paper industry is a very harmful one. It's criminal that tonnes of paper are bleached every day, simply to provide white toilet paper." We should also point out that Canada's boreal forests are being chopped down to make it. In Canada, there are alternatives made from recycled paper. Greenpeace says that "If each household in Canada replaced 1 roll of toilet paper cut from ancient forests with 1 roll of recycled toilet paper, we could save 47,962 trees in a year. "
They have produced a shoppers guide showing which products are forest friendly and which are not. Unfortunately we have tried some (like Loblaw's PC Green) and found it useable as sandpaper, and couldn't get through a roll. However Cascades brand seems soft enough. ::Greenpeace.ca Greenpeace in the USA also provides a list of American TP that is acceptable.
Read also Warren's post on Kleenex Kleercut=Wiping away ancient forests
And don't forget to watch that youtube video on their site's homepage where the new Kleenex commercials get "punk'd", in which they ask people to sit down at a blue couch and "let it out".
http://kleercut.net/en/
It's amazing what marginal differences can add up to over large populations.
Take for example our project, These Come From Trees.
If every coffee shop / restaurant in the US posted one of our waste paper abatement stickers on their bathroom paper towels dispensers, we project savings 500,000 trees worth of paper towels.
And this is just by paper towel using patrons using one fewer towel (most people use two or three or more) per trip to the restroom.
Amazing!
They missed one brand in their list - Green Forest. it's100 % recycled, 40% post consumer and bleached w/ Hydrogen peroxide and it is distributed by Georgia Pacific.
I am an avid user of Lablaws PC brand green toilet for about 5 years now. Personally i dont know where that sandpaper comment comes from because i cant tell any difference from other toilet paper.
PC is now 100% post consumer recycled paper, though im not sure on the bleaching technique used.
San Francisco banned plastic bags for grocery store. Bleached PT and paper towels should be the next.
I don't really think the forest industry wants to cut down less trees anymore that the oil industry wants us to save gas.
I'm trying Seventh Generation. It isn't Charmin soft but it isn't like sandpaper either. I'll keep using it.
On the recycled TP front, after two years of using S**tBeGone, it's the best of the recycled bunch. When we ran out in February (hey, 96 rolls lasts two people a very long time!) we tried 7th Gen, Green Forest, Eco-Products, and at least one other... and were disappointed in all. All were embossed (which makes them scratchier!), all were loosely rolled on the spool, which increases their shipping costs and warehousing costs while reducing their actual product delivery, and all were expensive. So I reordered from SBG and I'm now a happy bathroom camper again. Their product is smooth, soft (if folded, not wadded), and has no plastic packaging.
Plus, their marketing philosophy makes me happy - TP is not about fluffy bunnies and bears and tiny quilting women (who are far too Yuppie to be working at the drudgery of quilting billions of miles of TP...) and communing with nature in a piney forest...
Plus, they use union labor (as much as possible) and do their work in serious bulk. Check them out!
www.shitbegone.com