We don't have to destroy our forests to get soft toilet paper

About 60 per cent of trees cut in Canada's forests go straight to pulp mills.

There's nothing right about Patrick Moore's support for flushing forests down our toilets. His support for toilet paper and other tissue products from unsustainable logging operations is exactly what you'd expect from a paid propagandist.

Let's start with the first critical statement: "Not only toilet paper, but also paper in general is made from waste from sawmills . . . . " Perhaps Moore should go to forestry school, where he'd learn that 60 per cent of the trees cut in Canada's forests are sent directly to pulp mills to make soft toilet paper and other paper. They never go through a sawmill to make more durable products such as the studs we use to build houses (when the market is good), doors, furniture and flooring.

Pulping trees directly is a not an efficient use of our natural heritage and certainly gives short shrift to communities looking to maximize the number of jobs they get out of their local forest and its trees.

Additionally, one doesn't have to wipe one's derriere with "scratchy paper" as Moore suggests, to save trees. There are a number of companies that make good quality, soft toilet paper from recycled fibre. These products are not hard to find; they are found at most major grocery stores and pharmacies in the province and across Canada.

Greenpeace is against destructive logging operations that cross ecological thresholds and cause wildlife species decline, damaged landscapes, water pollution and soil erosion.

The pulp that goes into toilet paper and paper towels and other tissue products should not come from logging operations that have a long-lasting negative impact on the health of our forests. There is no need for this.

We believe that the pulp that goes into these disposable products should come predominantly from recycled fibre or, where absolutely necessary, from those forestry operations that practice the most responsible form of management and logging as certified by the Forest Stewardship Council certification (FSC).

Consumers are increasingly looking at the environmental cost of the products they use, and the bang for buck quotient is increasingly being measured by a product's environmental attributes. Why send your money to Kleenex manufacturer Kimberly-Clark when it purchases much of its pulp from West Fraser Timber? West Fraser continues to log intact forests in eastern B.C. and western Alberta with devastating impact on the dwindling caribou herds in these areas.

Greenpeace certainly recognizes that not all logging companies are bad and we work closely with the more progressive members of the industry who are making change. There are several leaders in Canada that are championing good relationships with first nations and environmentalists. They are pursuing FSC certification for their forest lands, voluntarily setting aside intact and other important areas of forests from logging, and generally being constructive in pushing provincial governments to keep their promises and commitments to better preserve our natural heritage.

Moore need only look to Greenpeace's successful collaboration with the logging industry, government and first nations on the central coast, the area we call the Great Bear Rainforest, for an example of a conservation plan that leaves neither the ecology nor communities of the region, including the economies that support them, out in the cold.

Greenpeace presents solutions that will help companies prosper and avoid environmental destruction every day. Supporting the use of recycled fibre for toilet paper is just one example of a personal choice making a difference. If every Canadian household replaced just one roll of virgin fibre toilet paper with one recycled fibre toilet roll, we would save nearly 48,000 trees. That's nothing to shrug at.

Richard Brooks is the national forest campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Canada.