The trouble with toilet tissue

Thursday, the New York Times ran an article on the environmental damage related to Americans’ “national obsession” with soft toilet paper. According to Leslie Kaufman’s report, the softest toilet paper can’t be made from recycled paper. Instead, “millions of trees [are] harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada.” (For the complete story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/science/earth/26charmin.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=toilet%20paper&st=cse)

Oh, great, I thought. Something else to think about when shopping. Here I go, trying to do the right thing, buying organic when I can, shopping the farmers’ market in the summer, buying cage-free organic eggs even though these are all more expensive, replacing the light bulbs with fluorescents even though I hate the blue glow, etc. And now I have to think about toilet paper, too? To coin a phrase (or a word): Oy.

But the more I thought about it, the more I found another message. Every purchasing decision I make is an economic one, of course. And while I was a spendthrift teenager, I gradually learned the value of the dollars I earned, and got to be good at shopping, and pleased with my shopping skills (I can get the very bottle of wine across town at 16% off the case instead of 10% off? SCORE!).

In addition to being an economic decision, a purchase decision is a values decision too. In fact, it’s an ethical decision. I don’t buy sheep’s-milk cheese at the farmers’ market only because it tastes good, but also because I want there to be working farms in Connecticut for the foreseeable future, and if that means I have to drive a little further Saturday morning to get to the market, that’s worth it to me. If I have to read the back of the toilet-paper package now, to see whether it’s made of recycled paper or not, that’s worth it to me too. Even if it is a little less cushy for the tushy.