Sludge Watch ==> Toilet paper toils - and spoils

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

What this story (and Greenpeace) miss is the whole idea of 'green 
production'.  European paper companies when with a 'green production' 
manufacturing method that doesn't rely on toxic processes and chemicals to 
make paper.

Instead, North America went with processes that require toxic chemicals to 
make virgin paper and to make deinked recycled paper.  Cutting down trees 
isn't the only environmental footprint that matters.  The placement of 
industrial sludges on farmlands and gullies as 'soil ammendments', 'gun 
berms', 'sound berms', 'dust suppressants', or 'roadside fill' transfers 
heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, endocrine disruptors, and volatile 
organics and dioxins into the environment.

..........................................................

Toilet paper toils
TRALEE PEARCE

>From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Toronto

April 25, 2007

Sheryl Crow kicked up a storm last week when she urged

her blog readers to restrict themselves to a single square

of toilet paper per restroom visit, "...except, of course, on those

pesky occasions where two to three could be required."


Now, Ms. Crow says, "It was a joke."

But she raised a good point, says Christy Ferguson, a forest campaigner 
working out of Greenpeace's Toronto office. Ms. Ferguson's team is preparing 
for the upcoming annual general meeting of Kimberly Clark - the world's 
largest manufacturer of tissue products - where Greenpeace plans to urge the 
company to wean itself off virgin tree fibre in favour of recycled.

"Reducing use is always a good idea, but we have to look at where these 
products are coming from," says Ms. Ferguson, whose office wall is hung with 
a poster that says: "It takes 90 years to grow a roll of toilet paper."

BY THE NUMBERS

Average number of sheets per bathroom visit: 8.6

Average squares consumed per person over a year: 20,805

Number of tonnes of facial tissue and toilet paper used by Canadians each 
year: 700,000

Number of kilograms per Canadian in a year: 22

Number of tonnes of virgin tree fibre used by Kimberly Clark annually, in 
millions: 3.1

Portion of that tree fibre cut down in Canada: almost one-quarter

Number of trees that would be saved if every Canadian home switched just one 
roll of toilet paper to a 100 per cent recycled brand: 47,000

Annual value of Canadian toilet paper sales, millions of dollars: 778. 9

Sources: toiletpaperworld.com, Greenpeace Canada and Euromonitor