A Low Carbon Life | Post 4 2019 | Sticking My Neck Out
This post isn’t about telling people what to do, although if someone disagrees with it, or it makes them feel uncomfortable, then it will be called that and criticised accordingly, just like an angry seagull. So be it.
I’ve decided to adopt a proxy measure for how much a person in a first world country like ours cares about climate change, and how prepared they might be to take action. Here it is! Toilet paper, dunny paper, consumables for the crapper – call it what you will! When I next use someone’s toilet I’ll be applying my measure of their interest in climate change.
I’ve been trying to think about the circumstances under which a person couldn’t buy recycled toilet paper without plastic wrapping and without dyes or perfumes and, hence, how reasonable or unreasonable my proxy is. Price is obviously one reason; availability of the product another; the time needed to source the recycled product another; the belief that it won’t make any difference to anything as big as climate change; and, unsuitable quality yet another reason. I don’t think the aesthetics of toilet paper is a sufficient reason to not buy recycled, undyed and unscented toilet paper. In the face of climate change, I have difficulty caring that one’s chosen toilet paper doesn’t match the bathroom decor (aka it’s not white enough or not coloured or it doesn’t have a design embedded in it).
So how does price stack up? I posted about recycled toilet paper some years ago and did a quick review yesterday. My thoughts are much the same but I did notice that there are more brands available and that to really compare price you need to choose price per sheet of the same ply. The cheapest toilet paper is not recycled; has to be purchase in packs of between 32 and 36 rolls; is plastic wrapped; seems to be 3-ply which is good; but, has a lot fewer sheets per roll (190 versus 400 and sometimes as high as 700 sheets) than most other brands. The difference in price between the cheapest non-recycled toilet paper and recycled toilet paper is $0.0007 less for non-recycled toilet paper which means it might cost you $0.13 a roll more for toilet paper if you purchased the very cheapest you could find.
Recycled, unbleached, unscented toilet paper that is not wrapped in plastic is readily available in supermarkets or is promptly delivered to you by some suppliers. For ease of comparison, about $1/roll is about the benchmark price for 400 sheets of three ply. It can be ordered on line if you can’t do your own shopping so I think I’ve covered concerns about price, availability, time and quality; my thoughts about making a difference are here. If you are prepared to choose recycled toilet paper without plastic wrapping, then you might be prepared to buy from Who Gives a Crap, an enterprise that donates some of their profits to sanitation for those without it. Sounds good to me and without ‘Fact Checking’ them (in these days of fake news), I think they’re OK.
‘Caring & Doing‘. Until next time, Jane