By Maya Shavit
Boston University News Service
Environmental activists are turning the bathroom into a battlefield.
The National Resources Defense Council’s fifth edition of “The Issue With Tissue,” emphasizes the organization’s frustration with many big box toilet paper companies and calls out legacy U.S. tissue brands for having unsustainable products.
“These are products that once used, they get tossed down the toilet or thrown away in a waste bin and they can’t be recycled. It’s important that you know the origin of their fiber,” said Ashley Jordan, author of the report.
The report calls out the likes of Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Georgia-Pacific and other powerful paper product companies for overlooking new regulations on deforestation in the Boreal Forest, a Canadian forest that is home to majority of the Indigenous Peoples in Canada alongside wildlife and “virgin forest fibers,” according to the Boreal Conservation.
“There’s been a growing pressure on P&G in recent years to incorporate recycled content into its flagship brands, and it’s largely failed,” said Jordan.
Companies that score low on the NRDC report have pushed back, noting their continuous consideration of the environment and resource availability.
“With regards to those raw materials, we’ve always been careful in the way we source and use natural resources. We are committed to sustainable forestry and actively take steps to ensure that the virgin fiber (trees) used in our products is responsibly sourced, no matter the location,” said Anna Umphress, senior director of communications for Georgia-Pacific.
Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark refused to comment directly on the NRDC report. Both corporations’ websites include statements on environmental consciousness.
To make tissue, the companies take wood pulp via logging and send it to high polluting mills that turn the paper white. This process commonly uses toxic chemicals for bleaching according to Kirstie Pecci, Executive Director of sustainability group Just Zero.
“This idea of cleanliness that Americans are obsessed with, if it’s not done correctly, comes at a price and the toxicity that’s inherent in our systems right now is making us sick,” said Pecci.
There have been a number of recent laws to protect North American forests. Domestically, in states like Colorado, and internationally, with new rules like the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation, to punish corporations that choose to clearcut.
While the NRDC and many environmentalist groups feel that the harm occurring in the Boreal Forest is imminent and dangerous, free market public policy thinkers like Jason Hayes, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy at the Mackinac Center, oppose the NRDC. Hayes also argues that their perception of the Boreal as “untouched” is naive, particularly after seeing last year’s wildfires take hold of the area.
“It’s a little bit of a colonial mentality to come in and tell people in northern British Columbia or northern Alberta or northern Manitoba that you can’t do life the way you have done,” said Hayes.
“Anybody who paid attention to the news last summer knows that the Canadian Boreal Forest is constantly being disrupted or disturbed like massive wildfires,” said Hayes. “One of the ways you can reduce the intensity of those fires is by doing things like what Kimberly Clark or other tissue paper producers are doing and that is responsible forest management.”
It is a balance when it comes to tree removal, according to environmental experts. Thinning can help reduce the spread of fires, but deforestation and clearcutting are contributors to fire.
There’s a mix of toilet paper brand sustainability success across the NRDC scorecard, with some top big box competitors including 365 by Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s and Target accompanied by newer brands like Green Forest. According to the report, “half of the brands that received A and B grades were launched within only the past five years.”
“Do the best you can and then try and push for the system to change. Vote and call your legislator and ask if they’ve done anything on this,” said Just Zero’s Pecci.
