Who needs a tube?

Kimberly Clark has started testing tube-free toilet paper for it’s Scott Natural's brand.

What’s the big deal about tossing out paper toilet paper tubes? USA TODAY colleague Bruce Horovitz reports that:

“The 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced annually in the USA account for 160 million pounds of trash, according to Kimberly-Clark estimates, and could stretch more than a million miles placed end-to-end. That's from here to the moon and back — twice.”

That is a lot of trash – and it also take a lot of trees to make the tubes, fuel to ship the trees and finished tubes to the manufacturers….you get the point.

Kimberly Clark will not reveal how the can make a roll of toilet paper without the paper tubes. They only say it has something to do with the way the toilet paper is rolled. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Seems a bit silly to think about tube-free toilet paper, but what a simply way for us Ordinary Environmentalists to help green the planet!

• USA Today online article Oct. 27, 2010.
• Scott Brand website