ECOFRIENDLY Toilet Paper Options
Bidet
Let’s start at the top of what is allegedly the best option and take a look at the bidet. I fell in love with bidets after traveling through Asia for a month and installed one shortly after returning home. I have been using a Luxe Bidet Neo 320 for over a year now. I highly recommend women using a bidet for daily in between shower cleaning. As a woman I love using my bidet after peeing, intercourse, exercise, and for menstrual cycles. However the bidet doesn’t successfully clean after soft or loose bowl movements associated with IBS, diarrhea related to food posioning or other various ailments.
TIP: When looking to upgrade my bidet I will be looking for a stainless steel or non-plastics sprayer head bidet system for greater hygienic cleaning. My luxe bidet has plastic spray heads and cover which are porous and easily build up of hard water and mold. The Luxe also had a “female” specific wash option that I immediately stopped using after the first attempt as it sprayed water directly under the toilet seat and onto my bathroom floor, all without ever touching me once.
Irritable Bowl Syndrome
Let’s get to the nitty gritty of poop. It is important that anyone suffering from IBS or any other irregular digestive disorders that can cause diarrhea or irregular soft bowl movements to please note that bidets are ineffective at actually cleaning post defecation aka #2. Those with regular formed stool may believe that bidets are great and work flawless but this is factually untrue as formed stool leaves little to no residue vs soft to loose stools which require more cleaning. Ultimately only friction such as that of toilet paper (TP) can clean these soft bowl messes. I recommend using toilet paper foam or spray for additional cleanliness.
Hot Water
Some bidets come with an optional hot water hook up as did mine. However I did not hook mine up to hot water because I quickly realized the absolute ineffectiveness of it. As my hot water heater sits at the opposite end of my house farthest away from the bathroom it would take a lot of cold water to clear through the plumbing before the hot water would reach me. This is a feature that I originally purposefully sought out but have yet to use. It is important to note that I have clear and unobstructed access to my bathroom plumbing via my basement and that I could at any point hook it up but I have yet to find a need to do so.
For those left wondering, yes the cold water is cold in the winter and sometimes a bit shocking. Especially as a woman and cleaning more nooks and crannies this exposes me to cold water for a greater length of time. It is not so horrible that I have been motivated to set up the hot water.
Drying
Another mostly overlooked issue with a bidet is the drying. There are bidet units with built in air dryers that require being plugged into an electrical outlet. However it is very uncommon to have an electrical outlet near a toilet due to electrical codes and the impracticality during building of new homes and bathrooms. Therefore a lot of people do not readily have an outlet next to their toilets. I didn’t have an electrical outlet next to my toilet nor did I wish to wire one in just for a drying bidet unit. To me this also seemed counterproductive to have to use electricity to dry myself not to mention that using a hand dryer in public bathrooms takes forever and I can only imagine how long it would actually take to dry off with a bidet dryer.
This left me with using towels and toilet paper for drying. The issue with TP is that it isn’t designed to be used in heavily saturated wet situations such as after using a bidet which is equal to having taken a shower. TP tends to shred when used in heavily wet situations such as drying from a bidet and will leave TP sticking to you afterwards. I found that using higher quality non virgin tree pulp non ecofriendly Charmin TP reduced these issues but negated the ecofriendly conscience attempt of using the bidet. So far the best solution is to buy or make your own towel TP rolls. Additionally keeping a roll of TP on hand for those messier #2 situations that a bidet just can’t handle.
CAUTION:
I only recommend using cloth TP for use after washing with a bidet. I do not recommend reusing cloth TP more than once before washing in the laundry. Additionally I do not encourage using cloth TP for fecal matter as this can readily lead to disease transmission. It is best used as a one time use after urinating and then being laundered before use again. It is optimal to use cloth TP after washing with a bidet.
Recycled Paper and Bamboo Toilet Paper
I only recently discovered who gives a crap premium bamboo TP after staying at a San Francisco AirBNB and I wanted to know more about alternative ecofriendly TP. I would also like to say that I left this AirBNB swearing off all thin fragile toilet paper. There are several ecofriendly brand options out there that I am not going to get into as many other bloggers have gone to great lengths to educate and inform us all.
First I would like to mention that a lot of brands such as Who Gives a Crap, no 2, or Bippy sell their products in bulk online without offering something as simple as a sample pack. I would have liked to have seen who gives a crap offer a sample two roll pack with one roll of their bamboo TP and one roll of their recycled paper TP. Instead many of these companies saddle buyers with the only option of buying bulk packs of toilet paper in the roll amounts of 8, 16, 30, 32,48, 60, and 80. So for those just starting out interested in these ecofriendly options it can easily be very overwhelming for a first time buyer to purchase such a large amount on an unknown product.
I also want to share something that no one seems to be mentioning in any product reviews. Plain and simply put recycled and bamboo TP is an acquired taste and resembles the TP found in public rest area bathrooms, public schools, gas stations, and hospitals. Which is to say that it is very thin and fragile. The overall thickness, softness and usability of the TP is going to vary drastically for those who have been using non ecofriendly virgin tree pulp products such as Charmin, Scott, & Cottonelle and may surprise and shock those who make the transition quickly.
For instance the Who Gives a Crap Bamboo 3 ply TP is fragile and I have found that the top layer will break apart and leave clumps of toilet paper sticking to the skin and overall just requires that a person use a lot more of it for the equal effectiveness of the non-ecofriendly Charmin, Scott, or Cottonelle brands. I also tried the Seventh Generation 100% recycled toilet paper single ply 1000 sheet which was very thin and required that I use significantly more toilet paper for effective cleaning. Lastly a lot of these ecofriendly companies are proudly promoting that their rolls are double to triple the size of a “normal” virgin tree pulp brand aka Cottonelle toilet paper roll. However it is my experience that this has less to do with improved manufacturing and price savings vs the reality that these are lower quality toilet paper products that require using significantly more of it for the same effect.
- SHOPPING TIP: Go to your local Natural Grocers, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, New Seasons, or similar minded local stores and find a single roll of toilet paper and comparison shop until you find what works best for your household or before buying in bulk online.
- I reached out to No 2 via email about purchasing a single sample roll and I was informed that only buying a bulk pack of 24 rolls is an option at this time. I am still waiting to hear back from Bippy about obtaining a single sample roll.
Wrapping
One blogger review I came accross wrote about their disatisfaction with the individually wrapped toilet paper rolls and she couldn’t understand the necessity and went on a large rant blaming peoples vanity for the needless wrapping. I would like to point out that I highly doubt this person cleans their bathroom at all and possibly makes their significant other clean it. I however am the person in my household that cleans the bathroom and for anyone living in an older home or that gets down and dirty doing deep cleans where you actually clean your base boards and window sills then you would know just how quickly a humid bathroom becomes a nasty dirt trap collecting lint, dirt, dust, hair, skin, and if you have pets then their skin and furr that all turns into this messy furball/hairball disaster that just sticks to everything. I would never leave my toilet paper unwrapped and exposed in my bathroom and I purposfully am seeking out individually wrapped toilet paper rolls so that they will be sanitary and clean when I finally get around to needing to use them after being stored for an undetermined amount of time in the bathroom.
While shopping at my local Natural Grocers I noticed that the 4-6 roll packages of toilet paper were in plastic wrap which I couldn’t condone and I am trying to move away from buying. There were of course individually wrapped toilet paper rolls that I did purchase and will help me to further narrow down what I will eventually decide to purchase. For what it is worth when buying online in bulk from who gives a crap, Bippy, and no 2 they individually wrap each toilet paper roll and ship them in a large box.
CONCLUSION
It is really tough to break from the status quo of using the higher end virgin pulp non-ecofriendly good ole boy toilet paper brands that most of us have grown accustomed to using. However it is a change and transition that is necessary for the safety, security, and future of our environment and one that I am willing to make. I will continue to use my bidet, use washable reusable TP cloth for drying after using the bidet, and searching for that perfectly balanced and strong alternative ecofriendly toilet paper for those messier #2 poo days. For me it is a hybrid approach of using ecofriendly toilet paper, a bidet, and reusable TP cloth.