tp

Some time ago I decided that I really should start using recycled toilet paper. When you think about it, toilet paper really is the end use of paper, so it seems important that that not be the only use. The propaganda on the packaging tells me that for every 12 double rolls times the number of households in America, using recycled toilet paper saves

• 4.4 million trees
  
• 11.6 million cubic feet of landfill space
  
• 1.6 billon gallons of water
  
• and avoids 275,000 pounds of pollution
  

To be more eco-friendly, you'd have to use rocks like my sister does, and those don't flush too well! :D

I was explaining this to some friends at ballet. They spurned my idea, obviously favoring softness for their bum over social responsibility. The thing is, recycled toilet paper really isn't that bad. Sure, it's no Quilted Northern (the gold standard), but it's way better than the cheap, stiff, scratchy stuff in most public bathrooms (which also tends to have some recycled content, as I understand). And when you rephrase their objection as "Sorry, my ass is more important than the environment", the explicit selfishness becomes a pretty compelling argument for the use of recycled toilet paper, even if it were that abysmal! Anyway, they laughed at me. They seemed to think that I was already doing enough to minimize my footprint and that consequently I could justify using froufrou tp (never mind what their impact is; I'm not sure how they justify their froufrou tp!). I don't consider that to be a good argument either. Yes, I am more environmentally conscious than most Americans. But given the enormous ecological footprint of a typical American, it seems like us greener ones should do all that much more to help bring that average down!

The problem of course is that externalities are not included in the market prices of things, so you end up paying a premium to save the Earth. It's hard to do the right thing when you're standing in the tp aisle and realize that recycled tp is more expensive than Quilted Northern. Fortunately, the burgeoning empire of amazon.com sells it at much more reasonable prices and it's eligible for free shipping! Or rather, they used to. Unfortunately, they no longer do. Or at least, not in the quantities I'm interested in. Now they only sell it in cases of 36-48 rolls. My house isn't big enough to hold that much toilet paper at a time! So a week ago I ordered a batch from drugstore.com. Alas, I put it off for too long. The tp is not going to arrive until tomorrow, but I'm going to run out today! So I picked up some tide-me-over while grocery shopping this morning (I didn't want to use rocks). Now, drugstore.com is definitely not as cheap as amazon. But I was chagrined to discover that they're only 90¢ cheaper than my local grocery store, and that's before you factor in shipping, which is not free. Plus, my grocery store had a sale on it this week, so it was definitely cheaper to buy it here than online. No more drugstore.com for me! Oh well. So much for that experiment. Next time I'll do my homework before blindly assuming it's cheaper online!