The average person uses 20,805 sheets of toilet paper a year. Reduce your impact by using recycled!
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Happy World Toilet Day everybody! No, we're not being - ahem - cheeky - today really is globally recognised as the day to be loo-aware.
The main point of the day is to raise awareness about sanitation, or lack thereof it, around the world. Indeed, 2.5 billion people currently live without access to proper sanitation, which is not only an unpleasant but an unsafe situation, with 1.8 million people (sadly, mostly children) dying from related health issues each year.
But today is also a day for those of us blessed with a button to flush to think about the impact of our own dunny habits.
Each of us visits the toilet an estimated 2,500 times a year - meaning we spend about three years of our entire lives in the loo! Surely, between newspaper reading and toilet paper folding, this is enough time for us to mull over our bathroom impacts and set about making a change?
Let's begin with toilet paper. Despite it's dirty job, the typical roll of toilet paper sitting in Aussie bathrooms comes from virgin - and often old growth - sources. And a lot of it is unnecessarily bleached, printed, quilted and perfumed to boot.
Meeting the fate it does, why do Australian's continue to insist their loo roll is perfectly processed and prettified? Plain, unbleached and, most importantly, recycled paper will do just a good a job, and will make our environment much happier too.
This is the message of the latest independent Aussie campaign hoping to win our hearts, minds and, err, bottoms - the Wipe It Out campaign.
Wipe It Out's mission is to flush non-recycled toilet paper from supermarket shelves by 2014.
"Let us not be so rude as to chop down a tree and turn it in to toilet paper for its first and final use," says Aaron Fuller, the Sydneysider behind the campaign.
"One tonne of toilet paper made from recycled paper saves 31,000 litres of water and 400 kilograms of greenhouse gases."
You can pledge your support for the campaign, and make promises about your own loo paper use HERE.
As well thinking about the toilet paper we use, World Toilet Day is also a good time for us to be thinking about how we flush it away.
Your toilet whisks away an average of six litres of drinking quality water per flush, meaning the average person is flushing away around 40 to 50,000 litres a year - enough to fill a large backyard pool.
Today is the day to pledge allegiance to the half-flush function if you have it and to observe the 'golden rule' of letting it mellow if it's yellow (at home only, please!).
So know that we've got your mind down the toilet, go forth and spread the word! Sanitation and sustainability – it’s what today’s all about!
(PS - If you want more reading on the subject, check out our story on recycled toilet paper.
Comments
Wow I have to admit that I have never heard about the toilet day! Very interesting and a little bit strange day and it was quite interesting to read about this fest. Very kind the main point of the day - to raise awareness about sanitation. Not all the whole world is developed and there exists many countries where people live without any modern devices and do not have clean sanitation. Reading this your post I have found many interesting facts which I have not known before. For example that each of us visits the toilet an estimated 2,500 times a year... Thanks a lot for the interesting information one for time and keep up publishing those great and informative posts in the future.
How sensible is it really... to take 6-8l of perfectly good drinking water and poo in it, then flush it away? Several times per day X millions of people in Australia...Governments wouldn't need to be talking about people having to drink recycled effluent if they didnt poo in it to start with, just keep the clean water for more sensible uses. We are running out of water in many places in Australia and it really is time for zero water toilets to be adopted in all new building developments. There should be subsidies for people to replace their water-wasting flush toilets with composting toilets, just like we have for solar HW, PV, and insulation.
I have a Clivus Multrum at home which uses no water, the only sound it makes is the sound of a 3.6W fan (solar powered, as is the whole house) drawing air into it for aeration. No smell and no wasted water!
Save Trees? Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: "if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn't wipe it off with paper, would you? You'd wash it off”. With these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without feeling guilty. It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but please remember that in the big picture the industrial water users always far exceed the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways.