Luxury toilet paper might be soft and gentle but it is bad for the environment as reported in the New Scientist (24 April 2010, Issue 2757).
Some facts:
• 60 million rolls of toilet paper are flushed away in Europe every day
• The average American gets though 57 sheets a day, six times the global average.
That second fact is seriously weird. If that is the ‘average’ what are the biggest users doing? Literally!
The Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC highlighted the wastage of paper in rich and rapidly developing nations. In the US, 14.5 million tonnes of office paper and newspaper will be dumped this decade, despite being ideal for recycling as toilet paper – which is probably a better way to ‘dump’ the waste.
The potential savings are huge: recycled paper uses 64 per cent less energy and 50 per cent less water, and creates 74 per cent less air pollution, compared with paper made from virgin wood pulp.
The biggest obstacle to recycling, says Worldwatch, is a preference for luxury, multi-ply tissues. We are such softies.
Whilst western nations are the biggest users of toilet paper, the problem is increasing as its use is increasing in China and Africa.
May 27th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Just goes to show the mismatch of usage of global resources (American consumption). I think that it is really time that such points of comsumption be highlighted on a regular basis which can cause the users to be aware. If we know we are wrong, we can try to improve ourselves!