The dark side of toilet paper: Why wiping our butts is bad for the planet

It's something many of us do every day — wipe our butts!

Human backsides are somewhat unique in the animal kingdom: our fleshy butts help us stand upright, but having those cheeks also means we have to clean ourselves after we go to the bathroom.

In this episode of The Nature of Things 101, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki and Anthony Morgan discover the dark side of toilet paper and what alternatives are out there. 

Throughout history, humans have used many practical methods to clean our rear ends. Anthony and Sarika get a crash course in the surprising ways humans have wiped, rinsed and scrubbed their backsides. From ancient wooden "skewers" and corn cobs to pieces of pottery inscribed with an enemy's name, we've tried it all. 

In North America, toilet paper is king, but all that wiping is bad for the planet. 

It's estimated that in the U.S. alone, each person uses about 141 rolls of toilet paper per year — that's a lot of paper made from a lot of trees. And it gets worse. The companies that produced almost 80 per cent of that toilet paper use virgin wood pulp (i.e. not recycled). Logging forests and turning them into disposable paper products removes important carbon stores from the environment, just so we can flush them down the toilet. 

But toilet paper isn't the only option. There are bidets or handheld faucets you can install next to your toilet, as well as other options that use water to clean instead of a wad of heavily bleached TP. 

Some of these options might seem intimidating to those who aren't used to them, or there may be economic or logistical barriers that make the change difficult. But instead of water-based solutions, there's also recycled or even reusable versions of toilet paper to try out.