Like a Virgin

You’re making your weekly grocery store run (okay, fine...monthly grocery store run) and you are on the paper product aisle. You’ve got a few extra bucks in your pocket so you think, “How about I spend my hard-earned money on regular paper towels instead of recycled ones, so I can spend the extra $2 on Happy Hour tonight?” Understandable.

But, do you ever think to yourself when you are passing a tree on your way to the grocery store, “How about I pull over and chop down that tree trunk and wipe my nose all over it?” Ew, no. You don’t think that.

But if you buy non-recycled paper towels, that’s what you are inevitably doing….Plus, in most cases, making products from recycled materials creates less air pollution and water pollution than making products from “virgin” (non-recycled) materials.

Our tip for the week....stop de-virginizing all those paper towels and tissues and start buying recycled paper products!

To quote everyone’s favorite Trident commercial...Chew on this:

• If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees.
  

• If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber paper towels (70 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 544,000 trees.

• If every household in the United States replaced just one package of virgin fiber napkins (250 count) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 1 million trees.
  

• In case you forgot why trees are important in the global warming battle: A tree can grow to manufacture five pounds of pure oxygen per day, consume carbon dioxide to fight the "greenhouse effect" that threatens our survival, and provide the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioning units (for more facts about why trees are groovy, take a look at our November 12th post Get more Bag for you Buck)
  

Buying recycled paper products is as easy as downloading the new JT song from iTunes...Just read the label:

• When items are made from recycled materials, they usually say so right on the label.

• Look for products that have a high recycled content, including high post-consumer content. Post-consumer fibers are recovered from paper that was previously used by consumers and would otherwise have been dumped into a landfill or an incinerator.
  

• Look for products that are chlorine-free (TCF) or processed chlorine-free (PCF). We all love our Crest White Strips, but some things just don't need to be even whiter and brighter. Like your toilet paper. Unlike your precious chompers, the chlorine used in many paper bleaching processes contributes to the formation of harmful chemicals that wind up in our air.

Click here to check out a FULL LIST of how your favorite products fare in terms of recycled content, bleaching processes and post-consumer content.

Having trouble finding recycled paper products?

They should be at your local grocery store or drug store. But if not...When you’re on Amazon buying your the new Harry Potter book (Lydia!!), check out all their links to buying recycled paper products (Seventh Generation, Windsoft, Green Forest and many others).

Or when you are on Drugstore.com buying Excedrin in bulk because you decided to use your extra cash on Happy Hour instead of Recycled Paper Towels, click on their products links for these same brands.

Or go to TreeCycle.com (get it) for online resources for every recycled product you can think of and more. Get your office to switch to recycled paper or order your own biodegradable take out hot cups and save your Starbucks money for your house down payment.

If you are feeling uber-proactive:

CONTACT THE MANUFACTURER if a brand you buy for your home doesn't have any recycled content. Tell them to use more recycled fibers, to avoid sourcing from ecologically valuable forests and to ensure any virgin fibers used are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

And if you’re like my little cousin and still not convinced because you think that recycled toilet paper is made from people’s used toilet paper, HERE ARE THE FACTS:

The process that turns recovered paper into recycled fibers for use in new papers is a heavy-duty washing, scrubbing and screening process. Those papers are dumped into huge vats, similar to several-stories-tall washing machines.

Inks are floated to the top of the vat, where they are skimmed off. Heavier non-fiber materials in the paper (such as paper clips and staples) are swirled through centrifugal force and shoved through smaller and smaller screens to separate them from the fibers and send them out of the system as waste.

Recycled fibers are washed and scrubbed and washed and scrubbed and screened and washed again over and over before they get to the paper making machine.

Now you know so there is no excuse. Buy recycled paper products and leave the virginity to the trees.

For more info, check out Conservatree.