If it seems to you like we spend a lot of time these days discussing toilet paper, you’re not alone. Ever since the coronavirus pandemic began sweeping the globe, TP does seem to be a hot topic. In one glaring headline, the store shelves are bare and will be for the foreseeable future. In another, people are hoarding it in their homes. Why are people hoarding toilet paper? Jokes are made. We collectively puzzle on social media about who these people are. Even though we all know at least one. 

Deforestation, For Toilet Paper?

In a June 2020 report, the Natural Resources Defense Council asserts that there is yet another reason to be concerned about toilet paper: deforestation and climate change. The report titled The Issue With Tissue talks about the “tree-to-toilet pipeline”, and the ways it contributes to the ever-building climate crisis. And it is not kind. The report claims that a large portion of virgin wood fiber, one million acres clearcut from Canada’s boreal forest each year, goes to the largest American toilet paper companies. (1)

The report’s co-author Jennifer Skene had this to say: “With every roll of their unsustainable toilet paper, companies are pushing the world toward an unthinkable future, destroying ancient and irreplaceable Canadian boreal forest for something as short-lived as a flush.” (2)

The Flip Side Of The Roll

Just as the are two camps – over and under – when it comes to how the TP should hang, there is another view here too. The Forest Products Association of Canada takes issue with a number of the claims in the report. President and CEO Derek Nighbor says: “In Canada, we’re not harvesting trees to make toilet paper, we’re harvesting trees in a planned and sustainable way to produce lumber. And then at those sawmills, the leftover wood chips, sawdust, and bark then go off to different facilities for further processing.” (2)

We Need A Compromise, Paper-wise

The report takes direct aim at the makers of Charmin toilet paper, Proctor & Gamble. Purveyors of the best-selling toilet paper in the US, they use 100 percent virgin forest fiber. Though sustainable options like wheat straw or bamboo fiber are available. 

Mr. Nighbor’s response to that assertion was to say that consumers don’t show much interest in toilet paper made with recycled fiber. (2)

This answer is a bit of a head-scratcher. It seems the obvious choice, in this day and age, to make everything sustainable that we possibly can. The use of toilet paper is still so prevalent. We as a society aren’t inclined to move toward other options like bidets. Shouldn’t concerns regarding our impact on the planet be at the top of everyone’s minds then? As opposed to what consumers are “interested in”? 

Shaping what people are interested in is exactly what marketing, and influencers, are all about: changing people’s minds… changing the narrative. So it seems more likely that there’s just a lot of benefit in those agreements between the loggers and the purveyors of the resulting wood fiber. Here too, even in “big toilet paper”, there are so many inroads and lucrative relationships that it seems it doesn’t make much sense to rock the boat. No need to change things up.

Is it really just easier to keep everyone in the lifestyle, and toilet paper, to which they’ve become accustomed? That seems short-sighted, not very well thought out, given the state of our planet.