Where have all are heroes gone?
Posted on 09/23/2009 8:37:11 PM PDT by Saije
There is a battle for America's behinds.
It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).
It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess.
The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.
It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it.
This summer, two of the best-known combatants in this fight signed a surprising truce, with a big tissue maker promising to do better. But the larger battle goes on -- the ultimate test of how green Americans will be when nobody's watching.
"At what price softness?" said Tim Spring, chief executive of Marcal Manufacturing, a New Jersey paper maker that is trying to persuade customers to try 100 percent recycled paper. "Should I contribute to clear-cutting and deforestation because the big [marketing] machine has told me that softness is important?"
He added: "You're not giving up the world here."
Toilet paper is far from being the biggest threat to the world's forests: together with facial tissue, it accounts for 5 percent of the U.S. forest-products industry, according to industry figures. Paper and cardboard packaging makes up 26 percent of the industry, although more than half is made from recycled products. Newspapers account for 3 percent.
But environmentalists say 5 percent is still too much.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I already do but just from my wife and MIL
Yea it's a menace to those 1.5g per flush toilets that you made us get too.
“They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.’
I just can’t get behind this.
The Washington butt-wipes decree how the peasants will wipe butts.
Maybe environmentalists should start using the corn cobs reclaimed from ethanol production.
Where have all are heroes gone?
I remember the paper they used in the Underground loo in London. It was a blend of waxed paper and the yellow tracing paper we use for sketching in our design office; in fact we call the tracing paper “bum wad” because of the similarity.
Even worse was the stuff that passed for toilet paper in China during the Seventies and Eighties - a thin version of the cardboard that comes with your pressed shirts from the commercial laundry. Yow!
In the Italian public facilities, had to pay 4 or 5 lire per sheet of T.P. that was only slightly better than above. Those restroom attendants made out like bandits.
Just go to Sam’s Club and buy a pallet of Scotts.
It’s cheap, there’s a lot of it on the roll and it works.
What more does anyone need?....:)
That is way too much waste.
“Bring those corn cobs, Ma”.
The use of paper creates a demand for trees.
Someday we will admit that such demand helps the environment rather than hurts it.
For now, it is useful to argue for brazen contradictions until capitalism collapses.
I hope you have light bulbs stocked up too.
I think they should ban newspapers personally.
Yep, just like if humans didn’t eat chicken, it’d be an endangered species.
“The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. “
YOU LIE!
Paper products are made from trees planted and grown as a crop.
When are they getting this eco-toilet paper in the White House? Ha.
When we were stationed in Germany, our community had a "little Octoberfest" every year as a fund-raiser. We sold stuff the Germans don't usually get. Popcorn with salt instead of sugar, hamburgers, corn on the cob, and - you guessed it - toilet paper.
Their TP felt like brown paper towels, they couldn't get enough of the soft stuff we were selling.
you know what i can never understand? they can have the same manufacturing as us - why don’t they make nice tissue? I just don’t get it! You can’t find soft tissue over there. And look how thin the sheet metal is on their appliances. We’d trash what they have. Why don’t they make it thicker?
When I was a lad, a neighbor took his family to Russia, and his kid showed me a sample of Russian toilet paper. It reminded me of wax paper.
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