Well this was an interesting story I picked up this morning sifting through the standard garbage scattered amongst the world as we know it is ending diatribes.
Its an amusing piece with a serious undertone.
Think of a product that you use for 3 seconds and then throw away. The raw material required for this product causes large areas of virgin forest to be cut down every year.
Got it?
If not jump the break.
"This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.
Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution." Making toilet paper has a significant impact because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Toilet paper.
Soft luxury toilet paper to be precise.
I suppose that some may think recycled toilet paper is actually made from recycled toilet paper. I wonder if some cocaine sniffing marketing exec used that one to label a competitors more ecologically sound product.
Its like triple packaging on boxes of brand name food, this serves merely to get more profit by having colour on the shelves. Plain single layer packaging does the trick you can even sometimes see what you are getting.
Luxury toilet paper just makes no sense and destroys large areas of virgin forest that help slow down climate change.
Teaching Americans basic ecologically sound practices seems as hard as teaching them about evolution, it just does not seem to sink in.
Update:
You need guidance?
http://www.greenpeace.org/...
Download the guide above.
Further info:
Raw Materials
Toilet paper is generally made from new or "virgin" paper, using a combination of softwood and hardwood trees. Softwood trees such as Southern pines and Douglas firs have long fibers that wrap around each other; this gives paper strength. Hardwood trees like gum, maple and oak have shorter fibers that make a softer paper. Toilet paper is generally a combination of approximately 70% hardwood and 30% softwood.
Paper and pulp mills are the primary producers of dioxins, and manufacturers must carefully assess their effluvia to counteract the emission of dioxins.
http://www.madehow.com/...
Related to dioxins remember this famous case of deliberate poisoning?
On 17 December the Dutch laboratory where Mr Yushchenko's blood samples had been sent for analysis announced that the dioxin level was found to be 6000 times greater than normal. Mr Yushchenko's blood contained about 100'000 pg of dioxin per gram of blood fat, the second highest concentration ever recorded in humans. Also, the laboratory discovered that the blood was contaminated with a pure sample of TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin), the most harmful type of dioxin known so far, thus ruling out most inadvertent sources and implying that Mr Yushchenko had been poisoned deliberately.5 Not a single case of intentional dioxin poisoning had been reported before.
http://student.bmj.com/...
Still digging
* One million trees would be saved if every U.S. household replaced just one 250-count package of virgin fiber napkins with 100 percent recycled ones.
* 544,000 trees would be saved by replacing a 70-sheet roll of virgin fiber paper towels.
* 424,000 trees would be spared by replacing a 500-sheet roll of virgin fiber toilet paper.
* 170,000 trees would be saved by replacing one 175-count box of virgin fiber facial tissue.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...