subject: Why You Should Use Recycled Toilet Paper [print this page] Why You Should Use Recycled Toilet Paper Why You Should Use Recycled Toilet Paper
The tenderness of the delicate American derriere is creating more environmental devastation than the nation's love of gas-gulping cars, fast food or heating costs, according to ecological campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on quilted toilet paper when they use the toilet. "Toilet paper is really a product that we use for less than 3 seconds and also the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Organic Resources Defense Group. "Generations to come are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the worst excesses of our era. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a great deal worse than driving trucks in terms of global warming." Making toilet paper has a significant impact simply because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests. More than 98% of the toilet paper offered in America originates from virgin trees, said Hershkowitz. In Latin America, up to 40 percent of toilet paper comes from recycled products. "We have this myth in the U.S. that recycled is just such minimal quality, it is like cardboard and is not possible to make use of," stated Lindsey Allen, the forestry campaigner of Greenpeace. The campaigning group says it produced a manual to counter an aggressive advertising push by the large paper product makers by which celebrities speak concerning the comforts of luxury manufacturers of toilet paper and tissue. These brands, which place pockets of air between several layers of paper, are especially damaging towards the environment. Paper manufacturers like Kimberly-Clark have identified luxury brands such as three-ply tissues or tissues infused with hand lotion as the fastest-growing market share inside a highly aggressive industry.Its newest tv ads display a woman caressing toilet paper infused with hand lotion. The New York Times reported a forty percent rise in sales of luxurious manufacturers of toilet paper in 2008. Paper companies are happy to keep those percentages up, even as the recession continues. In addition, Reuters reported that Kimberly-Clark invested $25 million in its 2nd quarter on advertising to persuade Americans against trusting their derrieres to cheaper manufacturers.
But Kimberly-Clark, which boasts about its environmental credentials on its website, rejects the idea that it's pushing harmful products on an naive U.S. public. Dave Dixon, a company spokesman, stated toilet paper and tissue from recycled wood had been in the marketplace for many years. If Americans wanted to buy them, they might. "For toilet paper Americans in specific just like the softness and power that virgin trees offers," Dixon stated. "It's the quality and softness the customers in America have come to expect." For the best deals on toilet paper.
Lengthier fibers in virgin paper are easier to lay straight and make fluffy to get a softer toilet paper. Dixon stated the business used goods from sustainbly farmed forests in Canada. Americans currently consume vastly more paper than any other nation- about three times more per individual than the average European, and 100 times more than the typical person in China. Barely a third of the paper goods sold in America are from recycled sources- most of it arrives from virgin paper. "I really do believe it is exclusively an American phenomenon," said Hershkowitz. "Americans just don't understand that softness equals ecological destruction."
