“Recycled” does not mean “clean”
Environmentalists would like us to start being more Norwegian, wiping our asses with harder, recycled paper, since the softer stuff we love is made (largely) from old-growth forests.
The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper — in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts — are shorter. The web often is rougher.
However, all recyclers know that recycled paper is filthy. Recently, a bunch of workers at a recycling plant found cash hidden in some recyclables:
In 2006, the body of a 50-year-old woman was found on a conveyor belt. “That was the worst,” Gurney said.
But Tuesday, the feeling inside the station at 301 Carl Road was far from morbid.
Sometime between 8 and 9 a.m., sorters who earn nearly $14 an hour discovered a few of the $100 bills getting sorted in a machine called the “in-feed conveyor belt,” Gurney said. The piles of junk then snaked throughout the spacious building, finally getting shot from a conveyor belt, like a mechanical shower head attached to the ceiling.
Hope you caught that part about the dead body, because that’s exactly why you shouldn’t use recycled paper: you just don’t know what’s in it. Indeed, I don’t even wipe my nose with recycled paper — ever — because, as a recycler myself, I know better.