If you haven’t already seen, the Coen brothers skewer clean coal in this ad for The Reality Coalition:
Just for the weekend, I think I will harness the awesome power of the word “skinny.”
This weekend, too, I have to reassess my relationship with my toilet paper. Turns out the kind I love — and yes, it IS possible to love toilet paper — is killing forests.
Still, trees and tree quality remain a contentious issue. Although brands differ, 25 percent to 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper in this country comes from tree farms in South America and the United States. The rest, environmental groups say, comes mostly from old, second-growth forests that serve as important absorbers of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. In addition, some of the pulp comes from the last virgin North American forests, which are an irreplaceable habitat for a variety of endangered species, environmental groups say.
Here’s the poop on a variety of national brands, from Greenpeace, which provides ratings based, in part, on recycled content. In addition to toilet paper, Greenpeace rates facial tissue and paper towels. As luck would have it, all of the tissue, toilet paper, and paper towel brands I regularly purchase are bad news for the environment.
I must admit I have been swimming in the river of denial on this issue, but I can no longer sit on it or flush it from my mind: It’s time to change.
And it’s time to quit with the bad puns. This weekend do a tree — if not your booty — a favor: Buy recycled toilet paper.
