Satireday on Eco-Crap

Monday Moaning

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday, I can’t count – so bite me!

But, I have a moan, and this one has been stewing for sometime.

It’s a question.

Why do we have this?

Standard toilet paper

In every household, business, place of entertainment, simply everywhere you’ll find toilet paper.

Made from wood, wood comes from trees, trees are in short supply.

Why do we turn perfectly good trees into toilet paper simply to wipe our bums?

Bums have to be wiped

Sure, bums have to be wiped. I am not denying this simple luxury.

My question is why do we have to cut down trees to do it?

There are alternatives.

We have bidets and toilet shower hoses and the like.

But we also have recycled toilet paper.

Recycled toilet paper

My point is, that if we can have some recycled toilet paper, we can have ALL recycled toilet paper!

When we consider the environment and the illegal logging and the deforestation, it is CRIMINAL that we use virgin wood to make toilet paper.

The toilet paper manufacturers don’t give a shit. (excuse the pun, it was unintentional, but it stays) So it is up to governments to legislate instead.

Oh, the manufacturers will complain, the companies will wring their hands with grief, the corporations’ myopic eyes will water at the loss of profits as though you had just squeezed their collective testicles.

But I don’t care.

Any government has the power to ban toilet paper made from virgin wood, effective in three months, has the power to ban the sales.

The fine for any non-compliance: reforestation of a substantial tract of deforested land; or a million dollars for every tree used!

The world must ban first-use toilet paper.

Support recycled toilet paper,

make it your choice!

 

Change the World Wednesday – 19th Mar

Clorinha’s first baby photo

Still crazy, this week I’m here at 1am. It’s too hot to sleep despite the fan. We had 43ºC (that’s hot, even in ºF – 110 something).

Let me introduce you to Clorinha. She’s still at home with Mommy, and will be for another two weeks. I have called her Clorinha because Daddy was Cloro (bleach), and she’s a little girl Cloro, she has the same markings as her Dad.

CTWW isn’t actually up yet on Reduce Footprints, but I was here, so you get the introduction.

Yes, in a can

One thing I have changed in my life since I have become more environmentally aware, cans. I avoid cans like the plague.

I restrict my cans to sardines, I love canned sardines in olive oil on toast, and I have an emergency ration of feijoada (black baked beans with meat) which is easily heated without having to cook a whole meal in the evening which also heats up an already hot house.

I use about one can of each a month, sometimes less.

At my advancing age, a little more BPA can’t do too much damage. My endocrines are already disrupted.

But I generally stay away from canned goods, including drinks and beer.

However, last week at the supermarket, I weakened. I saw these wonderful cans of Guinness. Now I live in Brazil, Brazil does not make a good beer.

Four cans just leapt off the shelf into my shopping cart

A few weeks ago I bought two bottles of Stout made in Brazil. It was so unpalatable that half the first bottle went down the sink, the other relegated to the shelf in the beer box. To call this product stout was criminal, it was no more stout than caramelised pigs’ swill.

Now to find a quality brew like Guinness is a rarity here, I weakened. I would have preferred bottles, but they weren’t available.

Oh, and the stout was like heaven.

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CTWW is up now, but I’m going back to bed. I have had a quick read and will visit some of your blogs later when  the head is a little clearer and I have coffee.

This week’s challenge is a little easier.

This week, do not use or buy any paper towels or napkins. Instead, use cloth napkins and cleaning rags.

 

OR … If you never use paper towels or napkins, please review your paper use and determine if there are other ways for you to conserve. Can you use less toilet paper? Could you say “no” to printed receipts? What about printer paper, gift wrap, magazines and catalogs … can you give them up? Choose at least one area where improvements could be made.

 

OR … If you’ve basically eliminated paper from your life, please share your tips and ideas for doing so.

Part One

I do have a roll of paper towels in the kitchen, I bought a double pack about two years ago, and have just started the second roll. The last time I used one was to hold a juicy homemade hamburger more than a month ago. In my defence, I will say that I bought them before the previous CTWW challenge not to use them.

Part Two

If I used less toilet paper than I do, I’d be using my finger. I generally use one double piece for a wipe, then have a bum shower with soap and water.

Other paper reduction, I have stopped paper bank statements, I use the net.

I don’t buy magazines or newspapers, so there’s no problem there. Junk mail is a problem, not a big problem as most of it is little A5 sized flyers, the plain paper ones go on the compost heap, but the bigger glossies come at the rate of about two a week. Brazilian delivery does not understand “No Junk Mail”, although I have had strong words with some when I catch them. Which is why I am the neighbourhood velho caduco (grouchy old man).

Part Three

I can’t make any claims there. I use scrap paper for notes alongside my PC. Old papers used on one side get folded in four. I have a printer, but only print essentials for work on recycled paper. It hasn’t been used for more than two months, it’s probably rusted up.

Well, there you have it; my CTWW.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

Change the world Wednesday – 24th

April is nearly done, less than a week to go. My commitment to eat no beef for two weeks every month (1st & 3rd) has been successful.

I will continue with this as it has certainly not harmed my diet, although I do love my beef. I have instead turned more consciously to pork, chicken and fish, which all featured in my diet as much as beef.

Quite frankly, I haven’t missed it.

One thing, it has made me more conscious when organising my shopping. Actually, I don’t organise it, I hate lists. I just go along to the supermarket with the idea of essentials and things I know that I am running out of, and make up my menu as I go along the aisles.

It has made me aware of things like “Smart Bacon”.

If a bacon was smart, it wouldn’t end up as bacon in the first place.

Have you ever heard of this? It’s stupid. It looks terrible, it certainly looks unappetising.

Why is it smart, because there’s no fat. Actually it isn’t even bacon, it’s vege protein. People have this aversion to fat; fat makes you fat. Generally that’s bullshit!

Looks absolutely hideous

Animal fat is natural in modest quantities. It’s where the flavour of meat is.

The people who have created the myth that animal fat makes you fat are the companies that sell cooking oil, vege cooking lard, margarine, etc. It has nothing to do with reality, but everything to do with making money.

It’s the same as the myth about cholesterol. Every cell in your body needs cholesterol to reproduce. The doctors who tell you that you must reduce your cholesterol are doing the dictates of the BigPharma companies who make and sell drugs to reduce cholesterol. Sure you can accumulate too much, but the levels that the doctors use are well below what you need. So many people are scared into taking these drugs needlessly.

I did meet last week’s CTWW, not a paper towel, nor serviette used.

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On with this week’s CTWW.

We’re visiting the toilet again.

I call it a toilet, some countries euphemistically refer to it as the ‘bathroom’ or a ‘restroom’. To call it by its real name offends their warped sensibilities; they are to afraid to refer to anything that promotes/suggests certain body parts or bodily functions. I wonder who these paranoid people are?

A restroom, for pities sake! I have never rested in one yet.

This week, use less toilet paper. Rather than just pull it off the roll, count out no more than 6 sheets per use. If you accepted this challenge the last time we ran it, and did well, see how low you can go.

 

OR …

If you are already a toilet paper conservationist or have switched to cloth (oh yeah, some use cloth toilet paper), please share other ways that we can conserve paper.

A bidet

Well, the first part is easy.

I have long adopted the European/South American bidet-style of washing my bum after an initial wipe with two pieces of toilet paper. to get rid of the ‘dags’*.

Sprays the nether regions with warm water

I don’t actually have a bidet, but my shower has a hose with a rosette nozzle that does the job fine.

You can get kits to attach to your cistern, but that is a cold water job.

The cost of such a kit, would soon be offset by the saving in toilet paper.

Washing your bum is certainly a lot more hygienic than smearing faeces across you skin then wiping hard using a lot of paper to make them disappear.

A bad case of dags

*dags – the crap encrusted wool that dangles behind a sheep.

Hence the phrase, “Rattle your dags” when you want someone to hurry up. Because when a sheep so endowed runs, sometimes the hardened dags actually rattle.

Make you Fink on Friday

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Although we try to economise and the world is fast becoming a paperless society… paper does have it’s uses

Thanks go to Living Simply Free for the link to this clip