Procter & Gamble moves in the right direction with bamboo toilet paper

The campaign to protect our most important forests just took a promising step forward.

In July, Procter & Gamble (P&G), the company behind Charmin, Puffs and Bounty, announced a new bamboo-based product that would not rely on wood logged from Canada’s boreal forest.

As the largest intact ecosystem on Earth, the boreal forest provides a home to a diverse range of wildlife, from caribou and lynx to birds and bears. It’s also being logged at the rate of one and a half football fields of forest every minute — much of it to be turned into toilet paper.

“This step forward doesn’t mean our work is over,” said Environment America’s Public Lands Campaign Director Ellen Montgomery. “We still need to make sure Procter & Gamble’s new bamboo toilet paper isn’t just a novelty item but the beginning of a new trend, and we still need to encourage other companies to do the same.”