Toilet paper is one of those things we generally can’t ‘live’ without. We all buy it and I’m sure those of us who choose to buy a recycled toilet/tissue paper have often happily purchased Nouvelle. Safe in the knowledge that you are doing your bit.
Afterall it has a Woodland Trust badge on it and everything - it must be OK? Surely…
Well, sadly the reality is far more murky. Nouvelle is produced by Georgia Pacific and according to the WWF Report on how companies source fibres for tissue paper they don’t fair so well. For example “Land rights conflicts, forest destruction, irresponsible plantations management and illegal harvesting of timber are key issues associated with many of these forest regions”.
To learn more about the specifics of the tissue industry reports go to the WWF website, the information there is much more in-depth than I want to go into in this post and makes for an enlightening read.
But there is more to this story.
Georgia Pacific is owned by Koch industries and those of you out there that already know Koch industries will understand why this information might lead you to change brands. Surprisingly a lot of consumers have probably never heard of Koch even though they are the largest privately owned company in the world - no, really.
Dig a little deeper.
As ever, the Internet is your friend and you can find out a lot of information on your own - here are a couple of interesting links - both of which are from the U.S Department of Justice:
Koch Industries Indicted For Environmental Crimes At Refinery
Koch Industries To Pay Record Fine For Oil Spills In Six States
Wow! and we are just getting warmed up, these guys have been busy for sure. I don’t think I need to go much further - you get what I’m getting at.
The alternatives.
Getting back to toilet paper then, there are alternatives that do come from managed sources. According to the WWF report, looking for the FSC logo on packaging will help as this is the only standard they recognise as assurance that “If virgin fibres are used they need to come from forests managed to the highest environmental and social standards”.
SCA Tissue produce the Naturalle brand in the UK which is 100% recycled and available to UK consumers.
More information on recycled brands here.
Hopefully the WWF will have a new report soon and we will see if anything has changed in the world of tissue and toilet paper. As we effectively flush or trash 270,000 trees per day this is no place for toilet humour.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Did you know you can forgo toilet paper altogether? There are a growing number of folks using cloth for TP. Most people grow into as an offshoot of cloth diapering (and cloth wiping) - it’s just cloth wipes for everyone.
We’ve used cloth TP for about 2 years now. Having access to a washing machine and dryer is of course really nice for such an endeavor. We wash our wipes with our cloth diapers currently, collecting them in a diaper pail with a liner. We wash with an enzyme (phosphate-free) laundry powder, a few drops of tea tree oil, and vinegar in the rinse cycle. Once our youngest moves out of dipes (as he is in the process of doing), we’ll continue to collect the wipes in a wetbag, washing somewhat frequently.
Anyhow, just an alternative!
November 29th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Jez, thanks for informing us about Nouvelle - i’m definetly going to find an alternative.
Anna Kiss, I would be interested to find out what fabric you use for your cloths. Also what temperature do you wash them at in order to kill the bacteria etc.
December 1st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
We wash them on HOT and use tea tree oil and vinegar, which both kill bacteria.