Toilet paper, NOT just wiping yur butt.
Now then, popping up on my ShoutyFace feed lately have been ads and promos for a new toilet paper company, Who Gives a Crap. They’re very witty, funny:
Sure, we love puppies and sunny days and walks on the beach, but our real love is toilet paper. Why, you might ask?They’re planet friendly – it’s made from 100% post consumer waste (recycled books, office paper, etc.) I can even get bamboo* bum wipers from them.
They’re human kind friendly, donating half their profits to help build toilets for those in need.
Around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's almost 800 children per day, or one child every two minutes. Luckily, toilets are proven to be a great solution—they provide dignity, health and an improved quality of life. And in case that wasn’t enough, it’s been shown that a dollar invested in sanitation yields $5.50 in increased economic prosperity. Toilets are magical!also, they’ve:
started working with Sanergy, who build and franchise toilets in the slums of Nairobi, and then collect and convert the waste into agricultural products for Kenya's farmers.
This all sounds wicked fabola BUT their vastly amusing, earth friendly products are not available in stores. I can only purchase online and have it shipped. That means more packaging (transport boxes) plus the gas used and exhaust fumes emitted by the lovely delivery trucks. MORE carbon footprinting.Would it be better to just pick up a six pack locally and send a donation to a worthy bathroom cause? I went out to my local Stop&Shop as well as the nearby hippy/groovy grocery to research.
The only TP not made from trees, available at Stop&Shop, is Nature’s Promise. It’s free from added dyes, added fragrances and chlorine whitening. They say that No new trees were harvested to produce this product. Yea BUT that doesn’t tell me how much is pre or post-consumer waste though. The plastic bag it’s wrapped in is made with a minimum of 51% Recycled plastic. That’s good.
The
hippy/groovy has a few selections. Like Nature’s Promise, they all
eschew added dyes, added fragrances and chlorine whitening. What else
they got?Seventh Generation boasts 50% post-consumer recycled paper minimum. As for the plastic it’s wrapped in, the website says “packaging is recyclable at store drop-off in many areas.” Nope, not good enough.
Field Day is made with 80% post-consumer content. Can’t find info on their wrapping material though.
Green Forest wins the post-consumer waste race using a whopping 90% but their plastic packaging is not made from recycled plastic.
And then I spotted Caboo. It’s made from *bamboo and sugar cane.
It's touted as more planet friendly because:
- Bamboo and sugar cane grows within three - four months versus 30 years for a tree
- Sugar cane – the dry fibrous residue that remains after the extraction of juice from the crushed stalks – is what we use to make our paper. Wow! That's some serious use the whole beast action.
- Bamboo can grow in environments with depleted soil and little water and actually returns nutrients to the soil, which improves degraded areas. Bamboo also doesn’t require fertilizers, insecticides or pesticides.
Recycling or processing a tree into tissue can take much more water and energy than the minimal processing necessary to turn bamboo and sugarcane into paper. BPA can also be found in recycled tissue after deinking and cleaning recycled paper. Caboo’s sugarcane and bamboo paper is 100% BPA free.What the hell is BPA? ACK!
Too much damn information/TOO early in the damn morning. Maybe I should just get a Bio Bidet instead, huh?
That seems... complicated.
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, I read that if some country (India or China, probably) started using toilet paper like we do, the trees would be wiped out in a three days (or something like that). That seems like a huge issue.
But it's one of those things where, when the potential solution is complicated and involves more than changing brands, people shut off.
Yes. True.
DeleteWeighing all the factors, I'm leaning toward the Bio Bidet. Until then, mebbe the bamboo that I can get here in town.
Costco twelve packs last about a year around my house. No more no less eco-friendly than the others, it only takes one or two squares, and a twelve pack lasts me about a year. Actually hold up pretty good at the kids' (& grandkids) house, last six to eight weeks. Other than that my only real contribution to the conversation comes from a lifetime, several generations actually, of being around (whats left of) the logging and lumber industries: like asphalt and fiberglass cigarette butts, there's no such thing as eco-friendly toilet paper.
ReplyDelete*sigh* which brings me back to the bidet. I'm gonna have to invest.
DeleteI think bidets are pretty cool (heh). Hadn't seen one since Europe '72, but plumbed one into the last master-bath refinish I did. Female client: ordinary toilets are for the rest of the house ;)
DeleteYou do plumbing stuff? TOO FAB! I knew a woman, eons ago, she was a fellow flautist only, unlike moi, she had crazy huge natural talent (even studied under Jean-Pierre Rampal!). She threw over a potential orchestra career to become a plumber. As a plumber she could live whereever she wanted. In Orchestra World, where she lived depended on which audition she passed. I totally understood.
DeleteI appreciate your obviously extensive research on this. Caboo sounds like a winner, not because keeping Americans' often ample behinds BPA-free is such an issue (it's not like eating it -- more like the opposite), but because regrowing quickly and sparing trees are a major issue these days.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's hard to be too concerned about the nuances of recycling and so forth when there's this:
Around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's almost 800 children per day, or one child every two minutes. Luckily, toilets are proven to be a great solution—they provide dignity, health and an improved quality of life. And in case that wasn’t enough, it’s been shown that a dollar invested in sanitation yields $5.50 in increased economic prosperity. Toilets are magical!
Much of the world still lives in conditions that are hard for us to imagine. The people there would likely find our own concerns about packaging, post-consumer content, etc. incomprehensible.
Unfortunately in some cases the problem is cultural -- you can lead a horse to toilet water, but you can't make him shit.
"It's not working, because contrary to what Westerners might assume, the problem is not unavailability of toilets, but rather cultural and religious attitudes."
DeleteYes. We are a catastophically hideboubd race.