

Beyond Paperless: The Paperless Bathroom - kellyhclay
http://www.lockergnome.com/social/2012/01/05/beyond-paperless-the-paperless-bathroom/

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patrickyeon
Wikipedia (with sources tha may or may not be better than the Daily Mail) says
the average American uses about half a tree worth of toilet paper a year[1]. I
don't know about the virgin forest bit, nor how hard it is to find toilet
paper from recycled sources (it _is_ one of the lowest grade papers, so I
think would be easy to produce from recycled fibers).

If you're worried about the environment, some other possible resolutions: *
eat vegetarian one day a week * vow not to drive for errands less than a mile
away * switch to low-energy light bulbs

(Caveat: Un-sourced claim) I suspect any one of those would offer a benefit
for mother nature at least an order of magnitude above not using toilet paper.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper#Environmental_cons...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper#Environmental_considerations)

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burgerbrain
Do _"errands less than a mile away"_ exist for most Americans? I've spend the
last decade of so living in major cities, so the _vast_ majority of my errands
are much less than a mile away, but where I grew up a single mile wouldn't
even get me out of residential zoned areas.

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jakeludington
My current home is 2 miles from the nearest retail district, but I previously
lived just under a mile from 90% of the places I shopped. Because of the road
layouts, it was easier to drive for some things than walk.

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alexatkeplar
The casual assertion that people in the UK barely use lavatory paper is beyond
funny. We use epic amounts

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arethuza
"Every Briton flushes 17.6 kilos (39lb) of toilet paper down the lavatory
every year, almost two and half times the European average, according to
tissue industry figures."

From:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1541657/Britons-
le...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1541657/Britons-lead-the-way-
in-toilet-paper-use.html)

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zeteo
There's a good deal of energy and emissions involved in building a $400
fixture from scratch, and also an ongoing cost in pumping the water. Proper
carbon accounting might actually reveal bidet use is worse than toilet paper
(also, tree farms sequester carbon dioxide as a side benefit).

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leoedin
>Some other countries around the world, including Japan and the UK, however,
rarely use toilet paper at all.

I can't speak for Japan, but the UK? Really? Are people secretly running
around here washing their bums? I think I know one person with a bidet, and
I'm pretty certain they've never used it to wash their bum.

The article reeks of poorly researched "facts". Encourage less use of paper,
sure, but the environmental cost of installing an additional fixture and using
more water must be considered.

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sodiumphosphate
Using paper to clean the anus is not only wasteful, it's unpleasant and
ineffective. The universal solvent is clearly the superior option for this
daily task.

As nice a thing as it is, it doesn't take a $400 bidet to wash your ass with
water. Use your imagination. You can even do it in the woods, like a bear with
a water bottle.

And if you insist on using paper, I humbly recommend the delicate tissues of
the Christian Bible, which should be a fine alternative to such old darlings
of western bathroom culture as the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog, and are
available for free all over the damned place.

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wdewind
The focus on getting rid of paper is naive when you start talking about Dyson
Airblades. It's not just the cost of running the thing that matters, it's the
cost of creating and maintaining the thing. The same principal counts for
hybrid cars. They feel environmentally friendly because of marketing campaigns
that focus on metrics like paper and gasoline consumption, but when you count
the cost of creation, and even more importantly the cost of getting rid of
them, it's not as black and white as "we should move off paper and gasoline."

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gerggerg
Environmentally friendly and low cost do not have a direct correlation. You
can strive for both but they do not depend on each-other.

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wdewind
I was referring to environmental cost, not monetary cost.

~~~
gerggerg
I think the word people use most often is impact. Environmental impact. :)

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jasonkester
I've always been a fan of the SE Asia style "two buckets" solution, and I tend
to fall back on it whenever I'm in a country with dodgy plumbing that won't
handle toilet paper.

For my money, I'll trade an extra thorough hand wash for a giant garbage sack
of used toilet paper in my hotel room any day.

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mikeash
98% of toilet paper rolls the US come from virgin forest? And the only source
for this is the Daily Mail? Riiight.

I did a quick search, and found a more reliable article[1] from the New York
Times that states that 25-50% comes from tree farms, and most of the remainder
comes from second-growth forests, not virgin forests.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/world/americas/26iht-
paper...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/world/americas/26iht-
paper.1.20453524.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
kellyhclay
Another article from the New York Times states that less than 2% of TP for at-
home use is made from 100 percent recycled fibers. In the other 98% of TP, it
appears, contains some paper derived from wood from virgin forests.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/science/earth/26charmin.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/science/earth/26charmin.html)

~~~
mikeash
So 98% contains some virgin fiber, versus 98% coming from virgin forests. A
significant difference!

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yummyfajitas
A lot of Asia does this. It makes for great comedy:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwJI_jwhub0>

(For those who never lived in India: water has less than 50% uptime, so the
empty bucket + water outage is the result of stupidity rather than bad luck.)

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pragmatic
What about tissue paper (Kleenex to the layman)?

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rosser
That was the original purpose of the handkerchief. It's only since we started
using dead tree for blowing our noses that hankys became primarily decorative.

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cavilling_elite
I came here to look for the obligatory 3 shells comment. :)

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praptak
It is right there in the article itself.

