Which Is Greener: Toilet Paper Or A Bidet?
By Chris Baskind in Home & Garden
What’s the best way to be kind to Mother Nature when answering the call of nature? Here’s an example of why green choices aren’t always black and white.
Over the course of our publication day, we might receive a dozen or so unsolicited product pitches. Some are useful; some are blatant greenwashing; and a few make us think.
Take, for example, this recent PR come-on:
Hi, I was hoping you could incorporate the story below into your site/blog. It talks about a bidet invention that helps reduce toilet paper usage, helping the environment in the process.
Ah — the bidet. Common in parts of Europe and a few other places around the world, but a mystery to the majority of Americans. For most, a bidet is a novelty to be contemplated in the dark recesses of some French hotel room, not a component of greener living.
The bidet in question, the Biffy Personal Rinse, seemed nice enough: a bolt-on attachment for standard commodes which retails for about $100. That’s a good value when compared to the rather hefty price people pay for traditional bidets. But it got us wondering: how green is this thing, really, especially when compared to recycled toilet paper?
A touchy subject
It’s difficult to understand why environmentalists are so willing to discuss their bathroom habits with perfect strangers — or get those same strangers to start “greening up” by changing such an intimate aspect of their lives. With all the possible ways to lighten one’s environmental footprint, you’d think potty time would be about the last thing on the list.
Sheryl Crow learned this the hard way, becoming the butt of late night talk show jokes after calling for the rationing of toilet paper. Public reaction was predictable. Colin Beavan, a New York writer also known as No Impact Man, quickly discovered his family’s abandonment of toilet paper was usually the first topic raised when interviewed about his year of low-impact living.
That being said, we’re all about saving resources. Let’s jump in.
All those trees
Biffy Personal Rinse leads with the idea of saving trees by replacing toilet paper with bidets: an admirable goal. Their proposition is quite similar to that used by green household product manufacturer Seventh Generation when promoting recycled paper products:
If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 500 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees.
That sounds good. And it would be true, too — if lumberjacks were marching into natural forests with the sole purpose of hauling trees to the Charmin factory.
In practice, things aren’t that simple. Most tissue-grade paper is made from sawdust and leftover scraps of timber cut for other purposes. And while there are some outrageous exceptions, the trees come from vast stands of pulpwood forests, harvested like the vegetables you buy at the corner whole foods market.
That’s not to say there’s no negative impact to sustainable timber management: Pulpwood farms grow where native forests used to stand, and their relentless monoculture disrupts all manner of wildlife habitat. It takes fossil fuels to cut and transport the trees, and paper mills make terrible neighbors. It would be better if we used much less paper, but virgin toilet tissue doesn’t necessarily equal the destruction of virgin forest.
But bidets still save paper, right?
Once again, it’s not that simple. Let’s say you’ve just finished using a bidet. Now you’re sitting there with a very clean, very wet backside. What do you propose to do about that?
Using a washcloth would be somewhat taboo in the Americas, though it’s really no different than if you were toweling off after bathing. Traditional bidet use can involve the use of soap — think about it as a small shower. But even in countries where bidets are common, people often reach for toilet paper.
So it’s back to square one. Unless you’re happy to air dry or don’t mind using a washcloth, a bidet won’t save much paper or many trees. That doesn’t make the bidet a FAIL. Because, as usual, things aren’t that simple.
It’s about water
This seems counter-intuitive, but we think bidets are good environmental tech because they save water. A lot of it. Yes, a bidet uses treated water, an increasingly precious commodity. But it uses less than that utilized in the production of even recycled toilet paper — and a fraction of the amount consumed by virgin pulp.
Paper making is incredibly water-intensive. Even if water used by a mill is locally sourced, rather than drawn from a municipal system, the effluent from paper production invariably finds its way back into the environment. That means a flood of organic waste and chemical residue which must be processed or, worse yet, absorbed after being treated and dumped into some unlucky river or ocean.
Which brings us back to the Biffy Personal Rinse. Is it green? Yes, though for more nuanced reasons than simply saving trees. It will be at its most effective if you go the washcloth route; should still conserve paper if you use toilet tissue for drying, rather than cleaning; and will save water throughout its service life. It seems an affordable alternative to a full bidet, which would be expensive to retrofit in an existing bathroom.
Three reasonable alternatives
Let’s bravely propose three earth-friendly potty options. Choose the one which works best for you.
- Use a bidet. To be most effective, dry with a washcloth. But you’re still ahead of the game with paper.
- Choose recycled toilet tissue. Recycled paper consumes fewer overall resources than virgin tissue.
- If you prefer conventional paper, buy it on the largest roll your bathroom fixtures will accommodate. It uses less packaging.
Or you can continue doing whatever you’re doing right now — and turn up your thermostat two degrees during the summer. We’ll call it even.
More Reading:
Saving the Planet, One Square of Toilet Paper at a Time (WSJ.com)
Ready to rethink toilet paper for Earth Day? (MSNBC.com)
PDF17 Responses to “Which Is Greener: Toilet Paper Or A Bidet?”
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Excellent! As I am french I must say that bidet are not used for that particular purpose in France, nor in Germany or in all the mediterranean countries. Musulmans people are using “biffy personal rinse” for religious matter and chinese people are neither using biffy nor paper…So I think your conclusion is great.
This is GREAT!
I live in Korea and they have bidet attachments on top of their toilets. They take off the normal seat and replace it with a bidet attachment that will do the bidet wash and also blow dry your bum. It was strange for me at first, but now I'm used to it and I like it.
I loved this discussion! I actually did a post on my website about recycled toliet paper. Actually the poop report gives their assessment of recycled toliet paper (ie how it feels,etc). I did not make up that name of the report. So check out this site.
Anna http://www.green-talk.com
This is the first full blog post that I've read all the way through in a long time. I often contemplate these kinds of things in my head, because in a highly technological society, energy usage and waste is part of the production process of almost anything you can think of. I think the recycled toilet paper argument would be the best to pitch to the public, as it is the easiest for Americans to understand.
that is one hilarious post. Well done!
Good article Chris. I've missed the bidet when I moved from Turkey to the U.S. 15 years ago. It's great, not only environmentally speaking, but also for hygiene and comfort reasons. No, we never used wash clothes, but you do use considerably less toilet paper.
Hope this helps. I'm definitely going to look into the Biffy!
Cheers!
Hi Isabelle,
Muslims do not use the personal rinse for religious reasons. It's a matter of personal hygiene
I thought people would figure that out by now..
Thanks for such a thorough and reasonable breakdown of this issue. It is disturbing to attempt a level headed discussion of the pros and cons in this subject matter.
Great blog! I like the Korean Style Bidet the best because it washes and drys the bum!
This is really funny subject considering people in North America are silly with the potty humor.
I live in Canada and growing up some people had bidets and some didn't.
I know that my Muslim friends don't uses biffy personal rinse for religious purposes.
Only a few have the biffy, I haven't used it myself. I don't know…If there's a bidet there I will use it….with a bit of toilet paper.
My mum and nanny were on a trip to Spain she told me a funny story about my Nan, she thought the Bidet was for cleaning the sand off her feet after the beach! That being said I this is a great blog I’m going to look into this. Thanks