I have never really thought that much about toilet paper, that is until I just read an article in the Summer edition of the NRDC's Nature's Voice newsletter entitled, From Trees to Toilet Paper: Canada's Great Boreal Forest is Being Wiped Out.
According to the article, "Canada's boreal forest is being leveled at an alarming and unsustainable rate: a million acres a year is logged...the greatest threat is the one posed by logging, driven in large part by rapacious demand in the Untied States, the destination for more than three-quarters of all boreal wood products, The wood ends up as lumber, packaging and, perhaps most alarmingly, throwaway tissue products like paper towels and toilet paper. In fact, U.S.-based consumer-goods conglomerates like Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Georgia-Pacific use boreal softwood pulp for all of their flagship household tissue products. Even though recycled content and alternative fibers such as bamboo and wheat straw are readily available, these multibillion-dollar companies instead adhere largely to decades-old formulas that rely on virgin pulp..." WHY? WHY? WHY? I ask. Click the image of the Boreal Forest to view the entire article.
Included in this rather sobering article is a "Toilet Paper Sustainability Scorecard" and much to my chagrin, the toilet paper currently in our house received an "F" rating. Yikes! Thanks to some terrific work and reporting by the Natural Resources Defense Council, I will be making a more educated and thoughtful decision about what paper products I buy going forward. If enough folks join in and sales drop on products offered by "D" and "F" rated companies, perhaps they will change their ways and we can save a few million acres of pristine Canadian forest. I don't think I will ever look at toilet paper quite the same ever again.