We're real buttwipes when it comes to the environment......

[marmar]

from Grist:





Maybe you’ve heard that we’re now using more trees for toilet paper than for newsprint. (Not least because the newspaper industry is even more in the toilet than toilet paper.) But did you know that because of Americans’ demand for super-soft TP for our bungholes, 98 percent of the pulp used to make the stuff comes from virgin wood?

“Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution,” Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council, told the Guardian.

More toilet paper used to be made out of recycled office paper, but now that offices are going paperless, there’s less of the really high quality recyclable paper — the kind with the long fibers — to go around, notes Keira Butler in Mother Jones.

The average American uses 23.6 rolls of toilet paper a year — that’s about 7 billion rolls for the country. If a single eucalyptus tree yields 1,000 rolls, we’re wiping our asses with 7 million eucalyptus trees. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/list/lets-ban-toilet-paper/