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Sustainability Scorecard Flunks Charmin and Other Toilet Paper Brands

NRDC: “A new report takes the largest tissue companies to task for destroying North American forests and exacerbating the world’s climate crisis. “The Issue with Tissue” reveals Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Georgia-Pacific use zero recycled content in their at-home toilet paper, instead relying on ancient trees clear-cut from the Canadian boreal forest (the “Amazon of the North”). The report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Stand.earth includes a scorecard grading the sustainability of toilet paper and other tissue products. The average American uses three rolls of toilet paper a week—and major brands’ refusal to create more sustainable products makes consumers unwittingly complicit in flushing forests down the toilet.

  • This destructive “tree-to-toilet pipeline” does massive harm to Indigenous Peoples and iconic species like the boreal caribou and Canada lynx. Canada’s boreal forest also stores nearly two times as much carbon as is in all the world’s recoverable oil reserves combined. Toilet paper and tissue manufacturers continue to rely on forests even though they have the resources and means to create and deliver products with recycled and responsibly sourced content that are better for the planet.
  • The NRDC/Stand.earth report features a sustainability-based scorecard for at-home tissue brands, assigning “F” grades to such leading U.S. toilet paper brands as Charmin, Quilted Northern, and Angel Soft. Brands using recycled paper content, including 365, Seventh Generation, and Natural Value were among those awarded “A” grades in the report. The NRDC/Stand.earth scorecard also ranks facial tissues and paper towels…”

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