A rain forest is burning, but we wipe with boreal forests
Americans apparently have the most delicate butts in the world. We each use 141 rolls (28 pounds) of toilet paper a year, more than any other people in the world. Because of savvy marketing, we believe it must be soft and white. You know, the advertisements where people are fondling the rolls, holding them against their facial cheeks. Or the ones with babies in them. All targeting shoppers with the message that their family deserves the best.
Millions of trees in virgin forests are logged every year and turned into pulp for tissue prod
ucts — toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, paper napkins — that we use once and throw or flush away. Boreal forests in Canada are destroyed for our tushes.
All while we post indignantly on social media about Brazil allowing the rain forest to burn so its farmers can raise beef and soybeans and make a living, while we harangue about the Trump administration’s move to allow logging, mining and drilling in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
Not that those aren’t critical issues, but we must stop thinking we’re not connected to global problems.
I was a big fan of James Burke’s “Connections” series aired by the BBC in 1978-1979, in which he showed how seemingly disparate discoveries and actions were connected. When I feel inadequate to impact a global issue, I often try to connect a few dots in search of actions that I – or any individual – can take to affect change.
Want to talk about saving forests? Let’s talk about toilet paper.
You’re probably already using the recycled paper variety. The hospitality industry, workplaces and public places such as airports and government buildings have largely switched to recycled paper products. I’m guessing your “nether regions” (research on this topic offers so many new word choices) haven’t noticed.
If the biggest makers of tissue paper products won’t change on their own, consumers can force them to do so. Just don’t buy that fluffy, white toilet paper. Save a tree — or a few million of them.
Forests, often called the lungs of the earth, are critical to human survival on this planet. We’ve been cutting them down (including in the United States) for centuries — to make roads, build houses and barns, to clear fields for planting crops or raising livestock. To make paper.
Sure, the production of printing and writing paper has declined in our digital world, but that is offset by an increase in production of tissue products, according to a February report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The pulp used for toilet paper, tissues and paper towels, comes from the boreal forests that stretch across Canada, Russia, China, Scandinavia and Alaska, just below the Arctic Circle. The NRDC report focuses on the one billion acres in Canada,
which every year “removes carbon dioxide equivalent to the annual emissions of 24 million passenger vehicles.”
A million acres of that forest are harvested annually. Those beautiful, old conifers become toilet paper.
“Canada is the world’s largest producer of northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK) pulp, which is favored in virgin pulp tissue production,” the report says. “Approximately half of Canada’s NBSK pulp goes to creating tissue products.”
The United States has the biggest market for those products: with 4% of the world’s population, we use 20% of tissue products.
I could go crazy and suggest we all invest in bidet attachments for our toilets, or use washable rags (yes, they’re on the market) to clean up. I can hear the “eewws” now. We are not going to change our flush-it-goodbye toilet cultural overnight.
I switched to toilet paper made from recycled paper years ago and was surprised that so much virgin tissue still is sold, despite a decade of publicity about going green in the bathroom. Marketing for softness has a strong grip.
Products that earned “A”s from NRDC include Seventh Generation, Green Forest, Natural Value and Trader Joe’s. I’ve tried those, and my latest experiment was ordering from whogivesacrap.com, because not only is the product made from recycled paper and wrapped in paper, the company donates profits to building toilets in places that don’t have them.
Do I pay a bit more? Yes. But higher demand and competition could bring the prices down. It also improves the market for recycled paper (another connection). And you can save money —and-trees—in other areas.
Buy a few cloth napkins to replace paper ones, which don’t work well anyway (notice how they always bring a stack at a restaurant?). Reduce your dependence on paper towels — reusable dishcloths or rags work just as well for most cleanups.
I’m browsing online for handkerchiefs to replace my basic Puffs. When I was a kid I learned to iron on my dad’s handkerchiefs. He used them all his life, so why didn’t I?
I’m no longer willing to pay the price in trees for convenience and habit. everyone of us can do something about our shrinking forests, and I don’t think our butts will even notice.