Earth’s forest are being lost. Fast. Vast swaths all over the world are being clearcut for commercial use and purposely burned to make room for crops and cattle grazing. Just since 1980, nearly 2.5 billion acres of trees have been cut down world-wide. For comparison, that is more than the land mass of the entire United States’ 2.3 billion acres.
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has skyrocketed to its highest level since 2008, according to Brazil’s own space agency. A total of 4,281 square miles of Brazilian rainforest were destroyed between August 2019 and July 2020 alone.
Clearing forests is a major contributor to global climate change. About 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation alone.
Cutting or burning forest has a double-whammy impact on our lives since living breathing trees actually absorb greenhouse gasses from the air. Forests are estimated to absorb up to 30 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions. So removing them from our earth is like removing a lung when we already have asthma.
While the bulk of deforestation is due to legal and illegal land-clearing, a whopping 15 percent is due to toilet paper production. That’s right. Millions of trees get flushed down the toilet every year – 27,000 trees. Every. Single. Day.
This is such a simple one to resolve. Use only 100% recycled toilet paper. Or buy toilet paper made from bamboo and sugarcane- seriously! This is new on the market, made from sustainably produced bamboo and is actually quite, um, comfortable!
There are some some simple things we can all do to combat deforestation. While the problem is big, the solutions taken one at a time by one person at a time, are easy:
- Plant a tree.
- Break the paper towel habit. Just use cloth napkins, towels and rags. Organic cotton is best, but using any cloth towel or napkin is cheaper and smarter than continuously buying expensive rolls of paper towels that land in the landfill. No, they are NEVER recyclable, not even if they are clean. Plus, the vast majority (anything white-ish) can include dyes, inks, fragrances, chlorine bleach, formaldehyde, adhesives, and other chemicals. Do you really want to wipe your kids’ face with formaldehyde?
- Buy only recycled paper products. Post-consumer recycled paper products can be found at nearly all supermarkets. Creating demand for recycled products by purchasing them is the best way to support recycling. Your printer paper can most definitely be recycled even if it has been printed with ink or is brightly colored.