Eco-friendly Brondell Swash®
reduces toilet paper consumption 75~100% So why all of the fuss over a little toilet paper? Over 100,000,000 rolls of toilet paper are consumed every day throughout the world. The United States uses over 3.2 million tons of toilet paper annually. 54 million trees per year are cut down to keep up with demand. In addition to deforestation, the production process itself is very destructive. Each roll of toilet paper produced requires:
In addition, daily shipping tons of toilet paper from the factory to the store unnecessarily consumes additional energy. More dirty facts about toilet paper:
How does a Swash® help? Above and beyond the improved hygiene and comfort benefits of Swash advanced toilet seats, they are eco-friendly by reducing toilet paper consumption 75-100%. Having a Brondell Swash in your home reduces toilet paper consumption via the effective cleansing of the warm water wash and optional warm air dryer. In addition, a Swash only uses an average 3-7 cents of electricity per day, even less when the power saving feature is activated. The benefits of using less toilet paper means less trees cut, less energy, water, and other resources for daily toilet paper production, and less double-flushing from clogged toilets. The amazing thing is that we are not just talking about using “a little” toilet paper…
http://www.4ecotips.com/eco/article_show.php?%20aid=1310&id=289 How is toilet paper made? Raw Materials Toilet paper is generally made from new or "virgin" paper, using a combination of softwood and hardwood trees. Softwood trees such as Southern pines and Douglas firs have long fibers that wrap around each other; this gives paper strength. Hardwood trees like gum, maple and oak have shorter fibers that make a softer paper. Toilet paper is generally a combination of approximately 70% hardwood and 30% softwood. Other materials used in manufacture include water, chemicals for breaking down the trees into usable fiber, and bleaches. Companies that make paper from recycled products use oxygen, ozone, sodium hydroxide, or peroxide to whiten the paper. Virgin-paper manufacturers, however, often use chlorine-based bleaches (chlorine dioxide), which have been identified as a threat to the environment. The Manufacturing Process 1. Trees arive at the mill and are debarked, a process that removes the tree's outer layer while leaving as much wood on the tree as possible. 2. The debarked logs are chipped into a uniform size approximately 1 in x 1/4 in. These small pieces make it easier to pulp the wood. 3. The batch of wood chips—about 50 tons—is then mixed with 10,000 gallons of cooking chemicals; the resultant slurry is sent to a 60-ft (18.3-m)-tall pressure cooker called a digester. 4. During the cooking, which can last up to three hours, much of the moisture in the wood is evaporated (wood chips contain about 50% moisture). The mixture is reduced to about 25 tons of cellulose fibers, lignin (which binds the wood fibers together) and other substances. Out of this, about 15 tons of usable fiber, called pulp, result from each cooked batch. 5. The pulp goes through a multistage washer system that removes most of the lignin and the cooking chemicals. This fluid, called black liquor, is separated from the pulp, which goes on to the next stage of production. 6. The washed pulp is sent to the bleach plant where a multistage chemical process removes color from the fiber. Residual lignin, the adhesive that binds fibers together, will yellow paper over time and must be bleached to make paper white. 7. The pulp is mixed with water again to produce paper stock, a mixture that is 99.5% water and 0.5% fiber. The paper stock is sprayed between moving mesh screens, which allow much of the water to drain. This produces an 18-ft (5.5-m) wide sheet of matted fiber at a rate of up to 6,500 ft (1981 m) per minute. 8. The mat is then transferred to a huge heated cylinder called a Yankee Dryer that presses and dries the paper to a final moisture content of about 5%. 9. Next, the paper is creped, a process that makes it very soft and gives it a slightly wrinkled look. During creping, the paper is scraped off the Yankee Dryer with a metal blade. This makes the sheets somewhat flexible but lowers their strength and thickness so that they virtually disintegrate when wet. The paper, which is produced at speeds over a mile a minute, is then wound on jumbo reels that can weigh as much as five tons. 10. The paper is then loaded onto converting machines that unwind, slit, and rewind it onto long thin cardboard tubing, making a paper log. The paper logs are then cut into rolls and wrapped packages. |