Greenpeace Opposed to Toilet Paper
Larf of the Day:
American taste for soft toilet roll ‘worse than driving Hummers’
Suzanne Goldenberg, US enviro correspondent guardian.co.uk, 26 February 2009 [here]
Extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply toilet roll made from virgin forest causes more damage than gas-guzzlers, fast food or McMansions, say campaigners.
The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public’s insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.
“This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous,” said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.
“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.” Making toilet paper has a significant impact because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests.
A campaign by Greenpeace seeks to raise consciousness among Americans about the environmental costs of their toilet habits and counter an aggressive new push by the paper industry giants to market so-called luxury brands. …
Evidently Greenpeace prefers catastrophic forest fires that burn down “virgin” forests and spew millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over responsible forestry practices that protect, maintain, and perpetuate forests, watersheds, habitat, etc.
As Oregon Goober Teddy The Torch says, “It stinks. It just stinks.” Of course, he was talking about healthy forests, not the backsides of enviro lunatics.
Comments welcome. You can pull out all the stops on this one, but keep it clean.
It’s big news in some circles. The MSM responds:
Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests from the NY Times, that giant dead tree pulp distributor [here].
Bottom reached, Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun (Down Under comments) [here]
by Russ
Save an owl. Whip your ass with a logger.
I think you meant “wipe” Russ, since vice would be versa — whip is what a logger could do to you. But it is possible you were speaking tongue in cheek.
by Bob Z.
I would suggest a name change for the Greenies responsible for this, but Brownies is already taken — and by an increasingly more credible organization.
I hope Obama is paying close attention to these people. And to James Hansen, too. Very close attention.
Close as in “within smelling distance”?
by bear bait
The old hook tender would send ‘em a hoop.
So do we go the third world model, and use the left hand as Cod gave, and save the right to eat and shake hands with?
I am waiting for the critique on bidets. That might be considered a waste of water in some arid climes.
But, and nothing counts before “but,” if you have your head where the sun don’t shine, this is all academic for the Trust for Poopy Pants folks and their minions at the NRDC. To them I wish a “Slumdog Millionaire” moment in the caramels of the one holer.
by Jeff
Save Trees? Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Get serious and add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: “if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn’t wipe it off with paper, would you? You’d wash it off” Available at http://www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won’t even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without felling guilty. It’s cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You’ll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. And after using one of these you won’t know how you lasted all those years with wadded up handfuls of toilet paper. Now we’re talking green and helping the environment without any pain.
by Tallac
I’ve been dumping on those whacky eviro’s over this tissue for years. They still cling to their beliefs that won’t let go.
Soon we’ll see billboards, posters and bumper stickers like these splashed and splattered everywhere:
SAVE A TREE. HUG YOUR GRASS
DON’T BE PEEVED, USE A SLEEVE
URANUS HAS RINGS, SO WHY NOT YOU?
Seriously, if toilet paper now gets taxed for “environmental damage,” the $#!+ will definitely hit the fan.
Jeff, my good man, please see Dehydrating California, Or What’s That Smelt? [here].
We can grow trees. We can’t grow water. Besides, flushing tissue stores that carbon underground in your septic tank. It’s sequestered!
Bury a Tree, Save the Planet.
by Tallac
Think about it for a minute:
Shooting a punch bowl full of ice cold water up the arse of anyone who thinks they’re saving the planet behind it is not such a bad idea after all.
The Bathroomsprayers would make a great gift for your “green” friends.
by Wayne K.
As usual, your back country travelers in California are at the cutting edge of this process of elimination. To fully understand this situation you need to know about the bears. Not so much that they poop in the woods, but that they eat there. Decades ago a bear that molested the food supply of a back county traveler was likely to wind up in a stew. This treatment of bears was eventually outlawed, guns were banned in the back country and the bears got the memo. Over time the bears discovered that they could steal backpacker’s food with impunity and all the bear need endure is the annoying “eek eek” noise the backpackers make while retreating in panic.
So, our federal overlords who control the back country engaged various strategies (killing bears, removing bears, hanging food in trees, etc.) all of which failed. Finally, an edict was issued: in certain vast areas of the high Sierras, all food must be carried in an approved bear proof plastic canister. A kind of tough plastic keg that requires a tool to open.
I know, this is about toilet paper. I’m getting to it. Certain areas of the Sierra Nevada are “overused.” The trail approach to Mt. Whitney is an example. Any hiker in reasonably good physical condition can make the non-technical ascent of Whitney and claim to have conquered the highest peak in the continental USA. It is quite a draw, but it is a long hike and people gotta go. Apparently, unsightly accumulations began to sully the approaches to Whitney, What to do? Install a latrine of some sort? Nooooo! In fact, latrines were removed from the area some time back to add to the illusion of “wildness.” And, of course, we can’t expect or allow people to dig a hole, bury their feces, and burn their TP. Fires are prohibited anyway (unless ignited by lightning in mid-summer). The solution: back country travelers in the Whitney vicinity must gather and pack out their feces. And if they are staying overnight in bear country, they must store their feces in their bear canisters with their food. Eeeeew seems hardly a sufficient expletive.
Personal hygiene in the back country has engendered much discussion of alternatives to TP, including a very thoughtful article on the Backpacking Light website about how to substitute smooth, rounded stones for TP. We have truly reached rock bottom, have we not? I found this article so useful that I printed it out to take with me on my next hike. I used the softest paper I could feed through my printer.
by hf
You must have missed Marc Morano’s series on the use of “family cloths” where the use of TP is altogether discouraged. Instead, they tear up old rags or wash cloths placed next to the toilet for wipes, stored in a bucket for laundering and re-use. What they probably haven’t thought of is the loads of phosphates it takes to remove bacteria to avoid a serious case of bacterial butt rash.
And the needed proximity to the toilet would be an ideal location for the curious toddler to find for some afternoon fun.
We need to bestow an appropriate ration of poo for the deserving, or perhaps the greatest enviro smear campaign ever.
Where one industry suffers a loss, as perhaps with toilet paper, another industry may boom in sales of bathroom air fresheners.
by YPmule
Good story, great comments, both have me laughing so hard I can hardly type right now. All I can say is I wonder how these people would deal with not having indoor plumbing?
by Flu-Bird
SCREW GREENPEACE ONLY A BRAINLESS MORON WOULD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH GREENPEACE I DONT WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS BUNCH OF STUPID GRANOLA MUNCHING TREE HUUGERS THEIR TOO STUPID TO COME IN OUT OF THE RAIN
The New York Times ran a similar story yesterday. I suggested to many that we should begin a campaign to send NYT people corn cobs, maybe even old used ones.