I don’t know if it is just me, but I seem to have this fixation about toilet paper. I cannot live without my stash of toilet paper – I always have to have extra in case I run out. Same thing with paper towels for the kitchen. More than quantity, however, I place such a high importance on the quality of the product. Toilet paper has to be three ply, and so on.
But did you know that forests are being affected negatively because of the tissue paper industry? (Of course you cannot discount other paper products.) I just read a report by the National Resources Defense Council and this is what it contained.
If every household in the United States replaced just one box of virgin fiber facial tissues (175 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 163,000 trees.
That’s a LOT of trees. It’s hard to imagine using “bad” facial tissues not made of virgin fiber, though. How about toilet paper?
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.
Okay, that’s a much higher figure! I guess I can deal with non-virgin fiber toilet paper much easier. And how about kitchen paper towels?
If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber paper towels (70 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 544,000 trees.
Here is my suggestion: more than using kitchen towels made of recycled paper, maybe we can start using cloth rags every now and then?