Environmental Groups such as NRDC and Greenpeace have long been leading a call to action to Americans obsessed with soft toilet paper.  Not only does premium tissue require pulp from live trees, many of the trees are cut from old-growth forests.  As the Good Human  notes, if every one of us switched just one regular roll to a recycled roll out of the next pack we buy, we’d save 470,000 trees and 169 million gallons of water - and we’d use 1.2 million cubic feet less of landfill space.

As with all recycled paper, remember to always focus on post-consumer recycled paper content.    The guidelines for “recycled” are so loosely worded that much of the recycled paper on the market is from materials that never leave the mill or converter where paper is cut into sheets.   While it may qualify for the EPA guidelines for recycled paper, it’s not what most of us think of as being recycled.     And this type of recycled paper does not truly address the issue of waste stream reduction through recycling.

The difficulty with tissue products (toilet paper, napkins, facial tissue and towels) is that the EPA has different requirements than it does for printing and writing paper, and the variance in recycled content in tissue products labeled recycled is normally much greater than in fine paper.   So be aware that some of the so-called 100% recycled tissue products on supermarket shelves have only 10% post-consumer recycled content which doesn’t even meet the EPA’s standard guidelines for recycled printing and writing paper (minimum 20% pcw).

And then there’s the bleaching and de-inking.    As many of us already know (especially those of us who live near one), paper mills are among the worst polluting industries.    Not to mention,  the paper industry is also the greatest energy consumer in the country.   And the U.S. paper industry’s reliance on chlorine-intensive bleaching makes this industry the worst water polluter in the world.

Which is why tissue paper is not even all paper.  It can be 20% to 40% fillers, coatings, and chemicals.    The worst part of the process of making paper is the bleaching process.   There are 3 basic types of bleaching:  chlorine gas, hypochlorites (a chlorine derivative), and hydrogen peroxide or oxygen.   Chlorine combined with other substances is what makes dioxins, which are the toxic byproducts we hear the most about, the toxic emissions that become concentrated in fish and become even more concentrated when eaten by birds and people.   Studies have long shown the potential impacts this can have on reproductive and immune systems.  The good news is that a few paper mills in this country are using an oxygen-based bleaching process, and several others are using a chlorine derivative, sodium hypochlorite, which is still harmful, but is a better choice than using chlorine gas.  

To help cut through the mustard, Greenpeace has put together a handy recycled tissue and toilet paper guide which ranks a wide range of products by their recycled content, post-consumer recycled content, and bleaching processes.   Here at Indoff, we are pleased to feature competitive pricing on the Seventh Generation brand, which carries Greenpeace’s highest rating and recommendation in all categories (facial tissue, toilet paper, paper towels and paper napkins).   

With the quality and quantity of good products on the market, there really is no reason for us to be using ancient forests any more for tissue.   It’s kind of like having a catalog next to …  well, I’ll just leave it at that.