Well, of course, we must spend money on toilet paper. If not a vital service, it is a vital consumer product, right?
For many years, I have sacrificed a teeny amount of time investigating the properties and origins of tp. My research began many years ago, when White Cloud left the market shelves, never to return (except in a new form produced by WalMart and I won’t go into why you shouldn’t spend your money at WalMart). I will not discuss how long it was before I recovered from the trauma. I wandered sulkily through the tp forest, testing, rejecting, reluctantly buying again, comparing prices, applying the impossible dream standards to which White Cloud had elevated me.
Lately I’ve settled down with Marcal’s small steps, recycled tp. I was deeply pleased to learn two things about it: first, Marcal is based in New Jersey, i.e., for me, a local company. And second and even more pleasurable, Marcal gets the paper it recycles from … New York City’s recycling program! So I put my newspapers out on the curb Monday night, and then Tuesday buy them back in the form of small steps.
Let us all burst into singing “Circle of Life.”
True, recycled tp is not as soft and dense as other papers, but it is eco and it is less pricey.
Before small steps, I was affectionate with Quilted Northern. (Charmin is actually puffier and more luxurious, but I’m still mad at the people who make it because they are the ones who demolished White Cloud.)
But here’s really what I want to tell you. Quilted Northern is produced by Georgia Pacific. Not only has Georgia Pacific been condemned as a major polluter, it is owned by the Koch Brothers.
Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, I can’t do much about barring the Kochs from buying governors like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. Nor apparently can I do much about David Koch’s aggressive patronage of Lincoln Center which, in response to the vast loot he gave them, stuck his name on the Center’s State Theater, the premiere dance stage in the city.
And I can’t do anything about the Kochs’ massive oil business since I don’t own a car and the heating system in my building is gas fired.
But I can tell everyone as offended by these autocrats as I am: DON’T BUY GEORGIA PACIFIC PRODUCTS. If you want to spend lots of money on tp, I recommend Charmin. But Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft and Quilted Northern? No.