Look familiar?
You know the drill. You have to run to the bathroom and you don’t bother to look if there is toilet paper in the toilet holder. Reaching over, your hand feels cold steel. “Darn it!” you exclaim. “Someone forgot to replace the toilet paper in the bathroom!”
If you have kids, a forgetful husband or wife, or just lazy roomates, this is not an uncommon situation. How many times have you gone to the bathroom to find that there is no toilet paper and you can’t get up and get some? I swear my kids only go to the bathroom where there is toilet paper because replacing the roll would be just too hard and (gasp) time consuming.
Finally, you vow to keep a few rolls in each bathroom because you do not want to relive that embarrassing moment again. (Perhaps running with your pants down the hall to find toilet paper? It just does not get more awkward than that.) Low and behold, there is very little toilet paper in your closets. It is obviously time to buy more toilet paper for your home.
With all this talk about global warming, and buying recycled products, here is your chance to do something good for the Earth. Buy toilet paper made out of recycled chlorine free paper! No, not toilet paper that has been used. Remember, it already went down the toilet.
How does buying recycled toilet paper help the Earth? “If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees,” according to the National Resource and Defense Council (NRDC). In addition, recycled toilet paper uses materials that would ordinarily go into landfills.
In addition, you should choose a toliet paper that is processed without the use of dangerous chemicals such as chlorine and mercury that harm our environment. When chlorine is used in the process of making paper, it results in the formation of harmful chemicals such as dioxins and furans, which are known chemicals to cause cancer in humans.1
Although saving the trees is very important to you, you wonder if they will feel like sandpaper you ask? Will your tush tell you to forgot about the Earth and give it something comfy?
Here are some brands to contemplate:
ShitbeGone, its real name.
Seventh Generation, one of the most well known eco-friendly companies.
Marcal, an example of recycled toilet paper sold in regular grocery stores.
NRDC’s Environmental Ratings of Household Tissue Paper by Category (lasted updated October, 2005) for a list of companies who manufacture tissue paper. This list delineates which toilet papers contain recycled content, the amount of recycled content and if they use chlorine bleach in their process.
Another interesting site is the poopreport.com which contains a post on “the most comprehensive survey of toilet paper brands.”
Look forward to my individual posts on these tree loving toilet papers.
1 NDRC: Avoiding Chlorine In Paper Bleaching Process http://www.nrdc.org/cities/living/chlorine.asp
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