The end result: big decisions in the grocery store

By Gwen Chamberlain My routine grocery shopping trip was progressing famously; floating from aisle to aisle, focused on just the items on my short list and ignoring the temptations beckoning me from all sides. But the progress came to a screeching halt when I faced a display of items that I found to be ultra confusing.

No, I wasn’t carefully choosing fresh fruit or trying to decide which organic marinara sauce is truly the best option. I was in the paper supplies aisle staring down the magnificent display of toilet paper options. Just how many choices do we really need?

Here is the selection found in this particular store, a typical Finger Lakes supermarket:

• Ultra soft

• Ultra strong

• Ultra plush

• Ultra comfort

• Ultra gentle

• Ultra clean (removes residue, reduces odor, for sensitive skin)

• Ultra soft & strong

• Soft septic safe

• Fresh linen

• Comfort plus

• Longer lasting

• 100% recycled I ignored the other shoppers who must have wondered why I was studying the display of wastepaper and furiously typing into my iPhone notes app. I had to preserve this phenomenon!

With each new product I encountered, questions and thoughts flushed into my head.

Somewhere there is an Ultra warehouse holding a massive inventory. Is there really a difference between soft, plush, gentle, and comfort? If you’re going for comfort, why not shoot caution to the wind and go for comfort plus? Why exactly do we need long lasting toilet paper? And just thinking of 100% recycled toilet paper is pretty unsettling, even though I know the name means it was manufactured from recycled paper products, not reused toilet paper. Are there as many choices for facial tissues?

Well, I had to bring this search to an end, and just picked a package that looked like the best option, and continued with the rest of my shopping, determined to learn more why there are more choices for toilet paper than for most other essentials like cereal or bread.

An online search opened the floodgates to details about organic toilet paper, tree-free toilet paper, and now I’m bracing for all the new Facebook ads for toilet paper, but it seems there are arguments for and against bamboo, recycled, and organics.

Among the nuggets of information I learned was that Americans spend more than $6 billion annually on toilet paper. It’s been reported the average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper a year, but we don’t often give it much thought. That is, until there’s a chance there may not be any. Remember the run on toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown in 2020?

I discovered, according to an article on ctvnews.ca, that the product I chose was graded “F” in a comparison of the eco-friendliness of your toilet paper. It is largely made from virgin forest fiber; its manufacturer does not avoid using primary forests, and chlorine bleaches are used. A Natural Resources Defense Council report, “The Issue with Tissue,” declares that those “Ultra” products are made from virgin pulp harvested from old forests in the Canadian boreal, a practice they say leaves much larger carbon footprint than a process using recycled content.

While bamboo toilet papers are becoming more popular, I don’t recall seeing any of those options on the grocery store shelves, but now that I’ve done a few searches online, I’m sure my Facebook feed will be lively with those advertisements too.

So in the end, it’s clear I need to learn which is the best choice for the environment, and make purchasing decisions accordingly, not on which cartoon bear commercial influences me.

The end result: big decisions in the grocery store

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