Toilet Paper

Rodger has an excellent piece on the horrible damage of toilet paper on the environment. Read the whole thing, but here's one statistic that should alarm all of us:

The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that toilet paper accounts for about 15% of deforestation worldwide.  

Maybe along with fighting to save the Amazon and restricting the growth of palm oil plantations in Malaysia, we should reform our own bathroom behavior. Use less, use recycled.

Remember, environmental destruction often happens because of consumer demand. Don't drive an SUV and complain about climate change. Don't fight to save forests and then go through a roll of toilet paper every two days. Every time you wipe yourself, you are destroying the world's ability to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, reducing species habitat, and making the world a worse place. We can call using toilet paper a necessity, and I'd certainly agree with that, but we can certainly reduce and recycle. Big time.

Wipe Yourself, Kill a Spotted Owl

We race through natural resources in ways that are so second nature to us that we don't even think about it. Take toilet paper. You are cutting down trees for this. Where do those trees come from? What is the effect on the Earth every time you (or I!) go for the extra soft double ply?

The environmental damage from toilet paper is massive.

Some of the paper comes from tree farms. But way too much comes from virgin or second-growth forest that we need for many other reasons--fighting climate change first and foremost.

What options do we have? Recycled toilet paper is a great idea. 19th century Americans used corn cobs, supposedly the origin of the term "corn hole." Maybe we don't want to go that old timey. But the great boreal forests of Canada are coming down every time you wipe yourself. We need to think hard about just how we impact nature and do what we can do mitigate the damage our existence causes. This is certainly one area where we can sacrifice a little bit of comfort, if that is indeed the right word for two-ply, super soft toilet paper, to take a significant step in saving the planet from destruction.