Earth friendly toilet paper tips

Do we *really* need that super soft, fragranced white toilet paper with the floral print? Our butts really don't care :).

The mind boggles at how many trees are cut down each year just so we can wipe our bums.

While toilet paper from recycled materials is quite common here in Australia and in many other countries, I was rather shocked to learn that in the USA, tissue made from 100 percent recycled fibers is still under 2 percent of the domestic use market among conventional and premium brands.

I'd like to warmly encourage folks in the USA (and to anyone using the virgin fiber sourced paper) to please ignore the marketing that says you *need* the super-fluffy blinding white paper and to at least have a try of the recycled stuff.

It might not be quite as soft, but millions of people I'm sure would agree when I say that it's not exactly sandpaper either. There's certainly no pain involved, I assure you :).

Toilet paper made from recycled material does the job, does it comfortably, does it well and really, isn't this an area of our lives where we really don't need over-pampering - particularly when otherwise what we'd be wiping our butts with is made from live trees?

One of the most commonly used type of tree can produce around 1,000 rolls of toilet paper. Given that Americans use an average of 23.6 rolls per person per year, let's do some rough number crunching:

23.6 x 303,824,640 (USA population at July 2008)

= 7,170,261,504 rolls of toilet paper a year

98% of that figure (the market share of toilet paper from virgin fiber)

=  7,026856,273 rolls a year

now divide that by 1,000 (what each tree can produce in rolls)

= 7,026,856 trees per year

Even if you should take out the "hybrid" brands that contain some percentage of recycled content, this would still amount to millions of trees.

Whether it's plantation timber or not, this represents millions of trees that could be cleaning up carbon dioxide, not sh..! Then there's all the other very important functions that trees perform in our ecosystem. At the very least these trees could be put to far better use in more semi-permanent applications such as furniture or building materials.

Recycled content toilet paper traps

Buying toilet paper made from recycled materials is great but even this can present some challenges.

Recycled paper needs to be deinked before it is pulped and processed. This deinking process may involve chlorine to bleach the paper. Chlorine based chemicals can react with paper fibers to create toxic compounds such as dioxin and organochlorines.

Dioxins cause cancer, learning disorders, decreased immune response, diabetes and all sorts of other nasty problems in the environment. By the way, the same chlorine issue is prevalent when using virgin-fiber based toilet tissue too.

When shopping for earth friendly toilet paper look for statements such as "unbleached", "processed chlorine-free" or "totally chlorine free"

Toilet paper from recycled materials costs around the same. If you're really in savings mode, you can also save on paper (and save yourself some cash) by opting for 1 ply paper. While a roll of 1 ply can be more expensive, there's more usable paper and studies have shown that people tend not to use more of it. 1 ply also breaks down faster, which is particularly a good thing in septic systems. Less paper, less pumping out, less cost.

Choosing recycled chlorine-free paper is something we can all do. If your local supermarket doesn't stock it, demand that they do!