How Green Is Your Toilet Paper?
Help protect old-growth forests by purchasing tissue from environmentally responsible sources.
Former tree
The names are so inviting: Soft & Silky, Velvet, Angel Soft.
But these "personal hygiene products" (aka toilet paper), while soft and gentle on the derriere (and usually very, very white), can be hard on the landscape. Most is made from 100% virgin fiber and bleached with chlorine.
So some of the most common toilet tissues on the market don't get high marks for being environmentally friendly.
Turn to Greenpeace's handy-dandy tissue guide for a list of products that are lighter on the landscape yet still gentle on your skin. And learn about a recent successful campaign to get one of the largest TP manufacturers, Kimberly-Clark, to use environmentally responsible sources—such as recycled fiber or fiber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Closer to home, Clearwater Paper in Lewiston is nearing certification for its fiber, too. Clearwater provides fiber (mostly byproduct from its sawmill) for in-store brands of tissue for Safeway and Albertson's.
Clearwater also makes tissue in the Bright Green brand, which is 80% post-consumer fiber. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, if every household replaced a roll of virgin-fiber TP with recycled, we would save 423,900 trees!
Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate
