The PROBLEM with Toilet Paper

the average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper a year which seems like a lot but if you look to other cultures or to history you'll see a lot of other ways to deal with your doodo but in a lot of Western Society we have been told that this idea of toilet paper is our only option and that is on [Music] purpose today's video is brought to you by our patreon supporters who make this channel possible over on patreon we have exclusive content as well as some behind the-scenes access to how we make these videos so if you want to support what we're doing get some extra content and be a part of this community go and check that out toilet paper was a necessary invention in the sense that we need to clean ourselves after a movement for sanitary reasons but it is not the oldest or the best option that we have at our disposal now before we get into to the charman ultra triple ply scented toilet paper experience of the 21st century we need to talk about some of the more DIY options that came before it now of the weird things that we've used to wipe our butt in the past some of my favorites are Moss which seems lovely bamboo spatulas which has the handy handle aspect to it and something called pooy which are pieces of ceramic with the names of our enemies subcribed upon them obviously corn cobs had a moment back there for a while and apparently people used to enjoy stocking their ouses with Sears cataloges before they started making them glossy paper that is now paper as a cleansing cleaning tool originated in medieval China in the 6th Century but by the 14th century they were manufacturing toilet paper but it wasn't until the Western World picked up on this in the mid 1800s and did what the West does best which was immediately start doing mass production of this stuff now you might see where this is going but if you want to understand how toilet paper became the default ass cleaning solution that we have today you have to understand some basics of business and human insecurity now paper that you use to wipe your butt is normal today but you have to remember that there were a lot of other options and that this was not the norm washing with water is the oldest and most effective way to clean your butt and as we mentioned there are a few other materials out there that one could use like the cob so toilet paper companies in the beginning had to convince people that this was necessary and they did some sketchy and not very nice things to do it now if you've watched our manscaped video or our deodorant video you might start to hear some similar themes here as we've seen with a lot of personal hygiene products toilet paper convinced us that there was something gross about our bodies that we needed to fix or at least hide now I know this is going to be hard to grasp but the whole idea that poo and pee and bathroom stuff is just like gross and icky and you shouldn't talk about it with anybody that is actually an idea created by clever marketing and then reinforced by social expectations poop has not always been taboo Believe It or Not communal latrines used to be pretty common and if there's anything that this ancient communal sponge on a stick says about human history it's that pooping and cleaning up after it used to be in fact very much a dinner table conversation I'm saying that you know it doesn't have to be gross but there are parts of it that I still feel you know like a sponge on a stick just doesn't rub me the right way I shouldn't say that however in 1950s America the first toilet paper as we know it today was made and sold this was known and presented as medical paper for the water closet now that sounds kind of star and that was the point because this was a new category of product and there was some social hurdles to overcome in order to get people to buy it they were first presented in this medical context on purpose now you might have seen this tactic noticed in some of our other videos like our episode about energy drinks which started in the pharmacy aisle the idea being that people are more likely to buy a novel product and spend more money on something if they believe that it's going to be better for their health and wellbeing now the first rolls in the US sold for 50 which by today's standards is almost 20 bucks a roll and they had to be very specific about how they marketed this product you couldn't exactly show the product in use right and people have been pooping since the literal dawn of time and never had to use this stuff before so the medicated butt napkin salesman had to invent the problem before they could sell the solution early TP ads really leaned into the medical product thing right this of course makes sense because sanitary bathroom situations are actually very important for human societies diseases spread easily in nasty situations that's just how it is but looking at these ads it makes you think that the people might have been a little more hesitant at first than you might think they realize pretty quickly that toilet paper isn't actually that great for your body they're talking about tissue illness discomfort and abrasion caused by scratchy paper and even fears about the chemicals that might in the roles but we're going to fast forward a little bit here to skip through all of the social growing and adapting and whatnot that happens Because by the time we get to the 1930s the cultural shift is complete at this point toilet paper wasn't just medically beneficial it was a moral imperative it represented good old American values it needed to be soft for your booty hole but it also needed to be strong and pure to be a good mother you had to have good TP and this is a com marketing maneuver you've probably seen before as well a product is invented and promoted for health reasons and it slowly becomes a social Norm that needs to be maintained with toilet paper it's praying on the vulnerability of children and pressures of femininity to sell a product very rarely do men appear in old toilet paper ads at all presumably because that would make them seem weak or something like that it is it sounds crazy honestly but apparently today there are still a lot of men who have issues um wiping their butts which I I didn't know I didn't know that so if you're one of those dudes who doesn't have the ability to to to self wipe as they say I'm just going to give you a little rundown so what you want to do is you want to take your index or your middle finger whichever one is longer and you want to just put our on back now just for a minute I want to put yourself in the POV of a toilet paper business owner okay because this business business model is perfect because people will always need toilet paper and for the most part it's a product that you buy without even thinking right there is a saying from a Harvard Business School Professor Gerald Zalman that says 95% of purchase decisions take place in the subconscious mind so combine that with the fact that buying toilet paper is awkward and you don't want to spend more time in the aisle than you absolutely have to and you can see how once you find a brand that you don't hate you're probably just going to go back and keep buying the same one the marketing around toilet paper today is all about that civilized lifestyle it's cozy it's soft it has at least two pies and you use it in the comfort of your upper middle class home very importantly it's white now believe it or not this may come as a shock to many of you watching this video toilet paper does not come off the trees perfectly white and square we're going to get into that later too all the toilet paper that you can buy today that has that perfect crisp white color to it that we associate with toilet paper is there because it has been bleached and that bleaching also makes it soft now if you're worried about rubbing bleach on your private parts I don't blame you until recently though toilet paper was bleached in a super toxic way like War poison level toxic but this was discovered in the'80s and by the time my baby bum was just being wiped for the first couple times almost all toilet paper bleaching in North America had switched over to safer chlorine-free processes so you don't have to worry about any of that that being said though there are some other chemicals to worry about a recent study found that every single popular toilet paper brand worldwide tested positive for something that is this it's it's these words also known as pfas or forever chemicals because they last a really long time before they break down and we have been seeing these in a lot of consumer products nowadays and it's becoming a little worrisome little stressful that we're finding forever cancer causing chemicals and everything that we buy and we've talked about this and shared stuff on our Reddit and on our patreon and whatnot so if you are concerned about those things we talk about those things too pfas are basically a manufacturing byproduct that happens to be super bad for you they're linked to cancer fetal complications liver disease kidney disease autoimmune disorders testicular dysfunction now I don't want to be this person believe me but if we were just saying man isn't it crazy that we were wiping our asses with that about Florine back in the ' 80s now what will we be saying 5 years from now all right but let's rewind a little bit Yeah is rewind time after the infamous toilet hoarding of 2020 things actually got way better for Brands like Proctor and Gamble now their demand is endless for toilet paper and because people are worried about running out they've really leaned into the online shopping and digital marketing strategies like subscriptions to guarantee consumer loyalty down the road this is how we find ourselves with those huge Costco siiz bags of toilet paper toilet paper apparently used to come in packages of like two or three and now it's like you can buy a bulk order of 24 rolls to have delivered to your door bi-weekly if you want I'm not even sure if I'm exaggerating you might be able to do that in fact I'm sure you can this is America godamn it I can have as much butt wipe as I won't but in a way it makes sense right toilet paper is a necessity for most people in North America and I can hear your Beday comments coming and believe me we're going to get there we're almost there but the toilet paper story really just has started to piss me off right at this this point whatever the time stamp in this video this is where we're not even at my least favorite part of this story so indulge me for a minute if you will so maybe at this point you're saying you know what listen I need to wipe my butt with something and that's just what's available what am I supposed to do hear me out there are two more factors here that just make toilet paper in its current form possibly my least favorite product to have ever existed first and foremost it doesn't even do a good job all right here's the thing you can hate plastic straws all you want but you know what they actually did the job that they were supposed to do we made a whole other video about paper straws if you wanted to see a video on that but toilet paper is just like not a very good way of cleaning up your butt after you take a dump every single Beday company on planet Earth is going to tug on this narrative that you wouldn't clean up a mess with some little flimsy piece of paper so why would you do that with your butt and the problem is it's true not only does it not clean you very well but it's not comfortable it can cause you TI hemorrhoids and skin abrasions if you're having to make multiple stops in day due to you know particularly spicy curry or something and Beyond it just being not very functional it's wasteful look I don't care if you think that climate change is a hoax invented by garden gnomes from the Dark Side of the Moon toilet paper being made out of living trees is just dumb as to send logging trucks and fell bunchers up into the mountains to cut down trees then to have those trees pulled out of the forest have them milled and processed and packaged shipped around the world for you to literally wipe your ass with it it's just insane but that's not even the craziest part according to our sources the top three American toilet paper Brands Proctor and Gamble Kimberly Clark and Georgia Pacific use 100% virgin Forest fiber from Canadian forests like none of them could think of another way of doing this and that one roll of toilet paper costs 37 gallons of water to make and I'm not trying to sound like a math teacher but that means that the average American is using 5,217 gallons of water per year just on toilet paper and that doesn't even include the stuff that you're using to flush the dang toilet and to all of you people who are thinking about saying oh well hey doesn't a bday use water too yeah it does but unless you're spraying your dirt box with a fire hose it's not even comparable and then to top it all off we shouldn't even be flushing toilet paper down the toilet some of the chemicals used in toilet paper interfere with the bacteria in sewage systems to help break the paper down meaning that it's going to be more likely to clog the pipes this whole flushable wipes debacle Act got broken down on a podcast episode that we did recently over on patreon now this podcast has been a really fun place for us to talk a little bit more indepthly into some subject matter relating to what this channel talks about but like in a less formal way right now the podcast is behind the pay wall on patreon but we are going to start releasing Clips to give you little bits and pieces of what we're talking about over there and give you some more free content on this other channel that we've just launched it's been a fun process working on it so far so hopefully you enjoy it but now back to the video and on top of that it was already clogging pipes before because for some reason humans have this inability to gauge how much toilet paper they should be using at any one time like how many times have you walked into a public bathroom looked in the toilet and gone what happened that you required a mound of toilet paper cck so that's where I sit on the subject of toilet paper and now I'm going to tell you what you should do in instead because you're here the best thing that you can do for yourself the health the planet and your wallet is to buy the day I personally own a tushy bedet attachment and a standard hose attachment and they both work really well it just depends on your preference now you can do all the research in the world if you want there's tons of these things many Contraptions that spray water at your butt so you got to find what works for you however we do have an affiliate link for tushy tushi still seems to be one of the most affordable models on the market Market clocking in at just under 200 bucks if you would like to get one for yourself we have a discount for you if you use the link down in description and we get a kickback from that which helps support this channel so you know it's kind of like a win-win win winwin situation you know if you think about it of course there are more fancy expensive options out there if you are so inclined but that's just what I've used in the past and it works great for me now I don't want to get real in the weeds here but my last Beday tip is that if you get a bedet you got to invest in the Beday towels to go with it it really makes the experience 100% better it eliminates the need for toilet paper completely all you do buy the little towels you get a little bin beside the toilet and you do your duty and you put them in the bucket and you do it with your regular laundry like it's that simple obviously we are biased we want you to buy the tushy stuff so that you support this channel but I just hope that you clean your butt responsibly you know what I'm saying and if you have to buy toilet paper which I know that we all do like I got toilet paper upstairs you think I'm not I don't own toilet paper we all got to do it but buy it from a company if you can that is better a personal favorite of mine is a company called who gives a crap they offer a subscription model product and they have recycled and bamboo toilet paper which is much better for the planet and they're a registered B Corporation and they have carbon neutral shipping there is a lot of companies out there making better toilet paper available to more people so maybe there's something local to use if you want to check it out but either way I hope this video helped you in your journey towards a cleaner butt and if you liked what you watched like it literally subscribe and we'll see you next week for another [Music] episode

Channel: Future Proof

Views: 290,635

Keywords: toilet paper, tp, charmin, charmin ultra strong, flushable wipes, toilet, two ply toilet paper, toilet paper review, purex, royale, cashmere toilet paper, purex toilet paper, bidet, tushy bidet, cottonelle flushable wipes, honest flushable wipes, compostable wipes, toilet paper compost, toilet paper environment, sustainability, environment

Id: CiNXBIISBb4

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2023