The High Cost of Maintaining American Arse.

15 million trees are sacrificed each year so that we the people can wipe! That's a hell of a lot of trees.

Honestly, I've never given the subject of anal cleansing much thought. But, after hearing about the number of trees that must be pulped on a loggers segment on NPR's Here and Now, I thought I'd look into it.

In addition to the 15 million trees, it takes 473,587,500,000 gallons of water, 253,000 tons of chlorine (for bleaching purposes) to manufacture that which we cannot live without, toilet paper . And that's only the production cost. The entire process, which includes the energy and materials for packaging and transporting the toilet paper uses about 17.3 terrawatts of electricity annually. That's what it takes to produce, package, ship and sell 36.5 billions rolls of toilet paper in the U.S. each year.

And what about after the deed is done? City sewer systems, water treatment plants, septic tanks, clogged pipes, etc. increase the cost even more.

Is there a solution? I don't know, but I do know that not talking about it will prevent a solution for sure.

I don't know what you do with those stones in the picture below, but obviously alternatives to paper exist. Although it doesn't exactly offer the squeezable comfort of Charmain, maybe it's time we look into the possibility of toilet stones. We can resurrect Mr. Whipple. I'm sure he could sell America on whatever those stones do and make it sound squeezably soft.

At the very least, let's try maximize the use we get from this extraordinarily costly product. Suduko, crossword puzzles, tic tac toe, ect. are some ideas. Here's an idea... we could eliminate newspapers all together, something that might happen anyway, and print out newspaper articles on toilet paper rolls. Merge the toilet paper industry with the newspaper industry...

If you are so inclined you can click here for more information regarding the alternatives shown in the picture.