Flushing the Forest

When was the last time you thought about toilet paper? I’m guessing it was during the Covid-19 pandemic when toilet paper, like flour and other things we take for granted, became gold dust. I still have a photo on my phone of a pack of 18 rolls that I fortuitously found in a supermarket. Who else remembers the thrill of snagging an item in shortage? Americans use, on average, 141 rolls of toilet paper per person every year, so no wonder we all panicked when we couldn’t find any.

Actually, that isn’t the last time I thought about toilet paper. That was at our Zero Waste Event back in January. Our Earth Care Coordinator, who, honestly, appears to know a sustainable alternative for just about everything, introduced me to a brand that I’m not sure I can call out on a church blog without needing a censor. Use the magic internet to look it up. It starts with “Who Gives A” and the end rhymes with “wrap”.

As I have discovered over and over again once we started talking about zero waste and sustainability, there are so many things I just don’t think about when it comes to sustainability. Thinking about toilet paper led me to an excellent resource from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) called “The Issue with Tissue”. I was down this U-bend and into the murky world of toilet paper in a trice.

I do encourage you to go and read the whole thing but if you just want the high points, then here they are.

• Traditional toilet paper is made from virgin wood pulp. This material comes directly from logging i.e. cutting down trees. The same trees that are diligently scooping up the carbon dioxide we insist on pumping into our air.

• One source of these trees is the Canadian boreal forest, just below the Arctic circle, where between 1996 and 2015 twenty eight million acres were logged. This is an area where measuring in football fields becomes inadequate, as this is roughly the size of Ohio.

• Logging, especially clear-cutting, has all sorts of impacts on the environment, all of them devastating on the air, soil, water, indigenous people, and wildlife.

• Processing the trees to virgin wood pulp consumes large amounts of water and generates air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, formaldehyde and acrolein, which can lead to respiratory problems; eye, nose, and throat irritation; and possibly cancer.

• The environmental impact of toilet paper doesn’t stop with logging and making the wood pulp. To make the toilet paper all white and soft, the wood pulp is bleached. Until the 1990s this bleaching was done with elemental chlorine which released dioxins into the environment. They’re hard to get rid of once they are there, and can cause reproductive problems, cancer, birth defects, diabetes, and allergies. Since the 1990s, slightly more environmentally friendly processes have been used for bleaching but they still release some dioxins along with chlorine gas.

• Apart from using less toilet paper (bidets anyone?), there are a few routes to more sustainable tissue. These include using post-consumer recycled paper or alternative fibers like wheat straw and bamboo. Wheat straw can come from agricultural residues left over after harvesting and bamboo can be grown intentionally to use as pulp.

In their final rating of toilet paper, the NRDC uses the following categories to generate scorecards:

• Recycled content - using recycled content keeps paper out of the landfill and also uses less water and generates fewer pollutants than virgin wood pulp. Post-consumer content is more desirable than pre-consumer content.

• Forest/bamboo fiber sources - Forest Stewardship Council© (FSC©) certified bamboo is preferred but bamboo that avoids deforestation and forest degradation is OK. Fiber from forests is, understandably, a big no-no.

• Bleaching process - using non-chlorine bleaching processes is better for the environment.

There’s some slightly complicated scoring and weighting that boils down to a final score out of 600 and, from there, a nice simple A+ to F grade for the toilet paper. The methodology is pretty neat, so take a look if you want to know more.

The seventh edition of their Issue with Tissue scorecard was published in December 2025. Why not take a look and see where your favorite brand stacks up?

Delmar Presbyterian Church is proud to be an Earth Care Congregation. We'd love for you to join us in some of our endeavors to live more sustainably. Look out for a book study on Waste Not in May, planting a garden for our friends at Family Promise later in the spring and removing invasive species with the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy in the fall.

Contact office@delmarpres.org or 518-439-9252 to find out more.