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DCL
This might get awkward in a second here, because I'm going to be blunt, and the topic is toilet paper. Just a disclaimer.
Here's the question: how truly necessary is it that you wipe your butt with the softest, most immaculately quilted, beautifully constructed toilet paper available? Is that something that's really, really important to you? As in, that minute spent cleaning up your rear must consistently feel like clouds are tickling your nether regions or something?
Because I have to say, personally, the cleanup session is over and done as soon as possible--I reach for the paper, I pull off the paper, I wipe, I'm done. I don't want to spend any more time wiping my butt than I have to.
Getting to the Stinking Point
So why I am I dwelling on this vulgar question, you might ask? Because Americans' insistence on wiping with the softest paper possible is literally destroying some of the most important forests on earth. You see, to get the soft, high quality so many American behinds crave, wood from old forests must be ground up to a pulp.
A full 5% of America's forest-products industry is taken up by toilet paper and tissue paper, both of which use old growth forests to get "plusher," softer paper. Destroying these forests--most of which are in northern Canada, some of which are in the Southern US, Indonesia, and Brazil--damages ecosystems and kills important global warming-fighting carbon sinks. Older forests trap more carbon, and are pillars of complex habitats. So why not just switch to recycled toilet paper, and spare the destruction?
But Old Wood Feels Good
Older wood produces longer wood fibers, which make for a fuller, smoother web when stamped out into a sheet--and they're difficult to replicate with recycled paper, whose materials come from old newspapers and printer paper. But recycled paper is getting better--good enough to for Fox News, even.
Who cares, you might ask, if toilet paper is soft or not? The answer is, unfortunately, a whole lot of people. So many people, in fact, that this video exists:Ridiculous.
Stopping the Soft Consumption
All that to determine which kind of paper can best do the frequent dirty chore. It's so pointless. Around two thirds of the people don't even have toilet paper period, and we're intent on only using the Charmin of the gods. Trust me, we don't need to be. I'm not even insisting everyone try bidets or going without toilet paper--just please, stop buying the plush stuff, and try recycled paper. You might like it a little less, but really is that so bad when you consider the alternative?
