Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

ELMWOOD 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 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.

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 old-growth forests . . . 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 calling off the "Kleercut" campaign: Kimberly-Clark had agreed to make its practices greener.

By 2011, the company said, 40 percent 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 real change will come only when consumers change their habits: "It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understanding how 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 believe that 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 change that with a two-pronged sales pitch. The first 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," company manager Michael Bonin said, putting this reporter through a blind test of virgin vs. recycled toilet paper. Two rolls were hidden in a cardboard box: 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 was not the answer they wanted: The recycled paper was on the left.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...304711_pf.html

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

This article presents further evidence that there are too many assholes in this world, something I've said for years.:tongue_ma:

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Nothing but the best for my pampered pooper!

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

The reason businesses save money by buying inferior TP isn't because its cheaper...its because everyone holds it till they get home to use the good stuff!

Why wouldn't you use the best you can afford? This article just doesn't make any sense. TREES ARE RENEWABLE RESOURCES! also grass "scrubs" co2 as well, so should we all stop cutting our grass cause its killing the planet?

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

QWAK,inviromentalists will change there MINDS:thinkey::favorites21: -- the first time they get :hahaha: HEMEROIDS!:36_1_25::favorites21::censored::111: :4_1_72:

the DUCK :wink::10_1_19::15_1_70v:

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Sorry but Europeans are disgusting. The toilets in Amsterdam don't even fill up with water until you 'flush' them. I'm sitting there wondering what the hell I ate to cause that rancid smell, until I realized it's because the shit is just resting on the porcelain not submerged in anything. Screw that.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

How about we flush "environmentalists"?

Anyone remember that loony bitch Sheryl Crow's comment?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101385_pf.html

"One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required."

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

okey-dokey.... without setting myself up for a total sh!tstorm, the Mercal recycled TP is all we use. It's just a "plush" and the virgin forest TP, and didn't require cutting down old growth forest to wipe my azz.

It's not like the gas station restroom see-through TP, it's actually pretty decent.

Bring it.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

I'm going to go scoot my ass across the front lawn the way my dog does it.
I wonder if there are any homeowners restrictions against that?:wink:

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

............................................

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Clear-cutting? Deforrestation?

Plant Hemp. It produces 4 times more paper-pulp per acre than does timber. And it is ready to go to market in only 4 months - compare that to timber's average of 10 years.

That's right, you can harvest hemp between 3 and 4 times a year, and it's producing 4 times more paper per acre than timber. That's 1200% more soft, squishy toliet paper, and it fixes the soil you plant it in at the same time.

..........Why in the world are "environmentalists" against this plant? Oh wait, they're politicians in disguise.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

The day a caribou wants to wipe it's ass, I'll worry about it's trees.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

what a load of sht

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Hemp is the single most useful plant on the Globe




Working at the behest of The Duponts

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Marcal is the worst "shit" I've ever used. Green Forest is acceptable, but much more money.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Have all you pro-hemp people called or mailed your representative and asked them to co-sponsor or support:
H.R. 1866: 2009-2010 Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1866
It currently have 15 co-sponsors. Is your rep one of them?

yeah, yeah, I know its pointless. Still, it doesn't cost much/anything to do it anyways.

also, i wonder what hemp toilet paper would feel like....I love my hemp clothes, but soft isnt the word I would use for it.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

ok, in response to this I am going to increase my usasage by 50%. I am going 3 ply forthwith.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

70% of all the trees cut down in this country were planted on timber farms for that purpose.

Its like saying we need to eat less corn to save the corn plants, even though some farmer planted them so that we would eat it and he could make a buck.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

Good ol' 'Stink Finger' Sheryl! haha:rofl:


oh, also....
CHARMIN ULTRA STRONG FTW!!!!1!
:ok:
best paper i've found so far. doesn't tear. doesn't leave butt goblins. comfortable enough.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

It's the 30% NOT from timber farms that I'm unhappy with. Cutting down an "old growth" tree (over 100 years old, imo) is like destroying a work of art. Each one is unique, never to be seen again.

Some of the farmed timber could be replaced with hemp, and be vastly more productive of long fibers.

Re: Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
 

I was going to point out that trees are renewable resources and paper can be made from all kinds of plants but others already beat me to it. The government really needs to get off the back of free enterprise. So many problems would just go away.