Has anyone tried to find post consumer recycled paper towels or toilet paper lately? I am sure that many of you who are lucky enough to have a proper co-op or Whole Foods near you dont have my problem, which is, finding paper products of a post consumer recycled nature. But..... In the case of paper towels and toilet paper.... WHY ISN'T IT MANDATORY!!!!! OK lets do the math a sec.... Be honest, most of us don't recycle our toilet paper, do we, and, 9 times out of 10, paper towels get tossed too, . Now lets ignore, for the moment, the number of trees being murdered to produce these two universally used products. How much carbon is emited from the chainsaws, trucks, processing plants, trucks again for bulk paper, refining, packaging, fork lifts, and trucks again to the stores. GULP... Now think for a second about those murdered trees that had the potential to off set the emissions from those prosesses. Where as recycled paper would not only emit less carbon in production, it would also leave more trees intact to eat that carbon. Do our butts really need pristine paper products? Does that spilled coffee need a whole damn forest to mop it up? The answer is no. In fact, I have put recycled toilet paper to the Pepsi taste test and found that it is no different in texture or absorbency. Same for paper towels. Now why is it so difficult to go to Wal-Mart (gasp) and buy post consumer recycled paper products? It is time we began to push for FEDERALLY MANDATED recycling programs. No amount of corperate double speak will convince me that it is more expencive to produce recycled paper than it is to produce it from scratch. Think of the amount of energy we could save if all those government forms were printed on recycled paper. The tax forms alone would fund a trip to Mars, and the waste paper from the government would produce the amount of paper nessessary to produce the recycled forms. The trees saved could off set millions of tons of carbon emissions. Is it me? Am I off my rocker? Is this not common sense? Don't hassel me with statements that the infrastructure is not in place. The company, Waste Management, stands poised to go postal all over recycling. If they can produce energy from garbage in California what could they do with a federally mandated recycling program. Would not all of the cost of raw material drop. Hey If im wrong someone please show me the math and I'll change my tune, I've been asking for years and no one has stepped foward. Perhaps because they can't.

sean