They'll have to take my soft Toliet Paper out of my cold, dead hands

[Ed Anger]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711_pf.html?j

The tree of liberty and my bottom is washed by the blood of treehuggers.

Soft Toilet Paper's Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, hold
Washin

OD PARK, N.J. -- 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 executivAt what cal Manufacturing, a New Jersey paper maker that is trying to persuade custo New Jo 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.

Felling these trees removes a valuable scrubber of carbon dioxide, they say. If the trees come from "farms" in places such as Brazil, Indonesia or the southeastern United States, natural forests are being displaced. If they come from Canada's forested north -- a major source of imported wood pulp -- ecosystems valuable to bears, caribou and migratory birds are being damaged.

And, activists say, there's just the foolish idea of the thing: old trees cut down for the briefest and most undignified of ends.

"It's like the Hummer product for the paper industry," said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We don't need olthe Naturalrests . . . to wipe our behinds."

The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper -- in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts -- are shorter. The web often is rougher.

So, when toilet paper is made for the "away from home" market, the no-choice bathrooms in restaurants, offices and schools, manufacturers use recycled fiber about 75 percent of the time.

But for the "at home" market, the paper customers buy for themselves, 5 percent at most is fully recycled. The rest is mostly or totally "virgin" fiber, taken from newly cut trees, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc.

Big tissue makers say they've tried to make their products as green as possible, including by buying more wood pulp from forest operations certified as sustainable.

But despite environmentalists' concerns, they say customers are unwavering in their desire for the softest paper possible.

"That's a segment [of consumers] that is quite demanding of products that are soft," said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia-Pacific. Sales figures seem to make that clear: Quilted Northern Ultra Plush, the three-ply stuff, sold 24 million packages in the past year, bringing in more than $144 million, according to the market research firm Information Resources Inc.

Last month, Greenpeace announced an agreement that it said would change this industry from the inside.

The environmental group had spent 4 1/2 years attacking Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Cottonelle toilet paper, for getting wood from old-growth forests in Canada. But the group said it is calligrowth for "Kleercut" campaign: Kimberly-Clark had agreed to make its practices greener.

By 2011, the company said, 40ke its p of the fiber in all its tissue products will come from recycled paper or sustainable forests.

"We could have campaigned forever," said Lindsey Allen, a senior forest campaigner with Greenpeace. But this was enough, she said, because Kimberly-Clark's changes could alter the entire wood-pulp supply chain: "They have a policy that . . . will shift the entire way that tissue companies work."

Still, some environmental activists said that Greenpeace should have pushed for more.

"The problem is not yet getting better," said Chris Henschel, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, talking about logging in Canada's boreal forests. He said rking aboge will come only when consumers change their habits: "It's unbelievable that thissumersl treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understahink ehow that would be okay."

That part could be difficult, because -- in the U.S. market, at least -- soft is to toilet paper what fat is to bacon, the essence of the appeal.

Earlier this year, Consumer Reports tested toilet paper brands and found that recycled-tissue brands such as Seventh Generation and Marcal's Small Steps weren't unpleasant. But they gave their highest rating to the three-ply Quilted Northern.

"We do ghest rathat you're going to feel a difference," said Bob Markovich, an editor at Consumer Reports.

Marcal, the maker of recycled toilet paper here in New Jersey, is trying to checycled t with a two-pronged sales pitch. Therying  is that soft is overrated.

"Strength of toilet paper is more important, for obvious reasons," said Spring, the chief executive, guiding a golf cart among the machinery that whizzes up vast stacks of old paper, whips it into a slurry, and dries it into rolls of toilet paper big enough for King Kong. He said his final product is as strong as any of the big-name brands. "If the paper breaks during your use of toilet paper, obviously, that's very, very important."

The second half of the pitch is that Marcal's toilet paper is almost as soft as the other guy's anyway.

"Handle it like you're going to take care of business," comndle it ager Michael Bonin said, putting this reporter through a blind test of virgin vs. recycled toilet paper. Two rolls were hidden in a cardboard cled the test was to reach in without looking and wad them up, considering the "three aspects of softness," which are surface smoothness, bulky feel and "drapability," or lack of rigidity.

The reporter wadded. The officials waited. The one on the right felt slightly softer.

That wited. The oanswer they wanted: The recycled paper was on the left.

[Neil]

The editing in the Washington Post has really gone downhill.

[Agelastus]

I'll take your word for it...

Anyway, one expects shitty toilet paper at work or in public conveniences. At home, softness is king. I favour Andrex myself, over here (the ones with the puppy advertisements) - two ply and very comfortable. 

I'd be willing to bet there's not a great deal of recycled material in them...although I could be wrong...

I think all tree huggers should only be allowed to use natural products. I've used some very acceptable leaves in my time when out walking in the woods.

[DontSayBanana]

I'll take your word for it...

Anyway, one expects shitty toilet paper at work or in public conveniences. At home, softness is king. I favour Andrex myself, over here (the ones with the puppy advertisements) - two ply and very comfortable. 

I'd be willing to bet there's not a great deal of recycled material in them...although I could be wrong...

I think all tree huggers should only be allowed to use natural products. I've used some very acceptable leaves in my time when out walking in the woods.

Andrex is Cottonelle to us on this side of the pond.

I hate the crappy toilet paper they put in public bathrooms; it takes at least a foot of it before I'm not worried about getting anything on my hands.  Also, crappy dispenser paper towels from China stink.  Literally.

[Eddie Teach]

Decades old trees are a renewable resource.

[garbon]

The editing in the Washington Post has really gone downhill.

Is this some weird copy and paste error?

[Josquius]

If you can afford to be able to spend money on overly soft bog roll then you should be able to do that. Its a silly excess and a waste but meh, you bought the dead tree.

[Brazen]

Recycled paper's fluffy enough these days to be indistinguishable from the planet-killing kind. It's not grey and crunchy any more.

Anyway, we should really go the Muslim way and take a jug of water in there and get to work with the left hand.

[Tonitrus]

The editing in the Washington Post has really gone downhill.

Is this some weird copy and paste error?

I just figured the Washington Post was trying to bring back Olde English...or Welsh.

[Sahib]

So Americans needs soft toilet paper?
How unmanly.

[Brazen]

I also find super-soft paper just doesn't have the, uh, grip to achieve a sufficient degree of cleanliness. I'm also a proponent of moist wipes, which though not especially environmental, do reduce the overall quantity flushed.

[Brazen]

The editing in the Washington Post has really gone downhill.

The editing in this thread title has too.

[Tonitrus]

http://www.totousa.com/Default.aspx?tabid=273

[KRonn]

I have a concern over the felling of old growth forests. But I have a lot of issue with the enviro movement where it's gotten out of control. Environmentalism is a good thing, but nothing is good if you take it to extremes, which I feel the leaders of the enviro movement have done over all. That said, I'm in more agreement with the enviros on this particular issue since if we can use more recycled and the product is good, I say go that route than taking down the old growth forests.

[Eddie Teach]

If there's a sufficient market for soft tp/kleenex they'll have tree farms that don't get cut as often for that purpose. I'm sure it'd still be cheaper than using cotton or silk.