Americans love luxurious toilet paper -- sales for brands like Cottonelle Ultra and Quilted Northern Ultra shot up 40 percent in 2008. Basically, people figure, the more TP can resemble a cashmere throw, the better.
Sadly, that whipped-cloud texture can only be attained by using fibers from standing trees, resulting in millions of trees in North and Latin America being razed to keep up with demand.
To help consumers make a more informed choice, Greenpeace recently released its Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide, which ranks top brands based on recycled content and whether it was bleached with chlorine, which can react with paper to create dioxins.
Green Forest and 365 came out on top, while Scott and Target brands were the clear losers. Planet Green also produced a nifty list of ideas to help conserve in the TP department, like recycling tubes or tearing from the top. It may sound like a non-issue, but the people at Current Configuration have demonstrated in a hilarious but scientiftic tutorial the dangers of tearing toilet paper wrong.
--Jordana Fyne
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