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Comment by throwmex | Hacker News Reader

As an Indian, I too had this WTF moment. It makes me wonder why paper is still used in the western world. Makes one wonder if there is a TP lobby out there ? We used to make jokes what if a TP user have diarrhea, how many trees will that be ?

If a bird shits on your hand will you use paper or water to clean it ? Its just that simple to comprehend. Just use water damn it. Cheap, hygienic, no left overs and green too !

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I wouldn't consider anything clean just by spraying water on it either. It takes soap and some mechanical action. With that in mind I don't view wiping versus spraying as being much different than each other, im not trying to sterilize my ass so someone can eat a meal on it. In certain situations, water might be preferable or not, but 95% of the time I don't find one to be more or less sanitary, neither is truly "clean" from the start.

> If a bird shits on your hand will you use paper or water to clean it ? Its just that simple to comprehend. Just use water

I would use both soap and water. Do people just use water without soap?

>If a bird shits on your hand will you use paper or water to clean it ?

If I didn't also have soap, I'd use paper over water. Water might leave you visibly cleaner, but you'll spread microscopic poop particles and microbes over a much larger area.

I wouldn't say paper spread things around less. Paper and water is the way to go (absent soap), and that's what bidets are.

I would. You can use paper on a very small area. Water gets everywhere, often unnoticed.

In the vein of recommendations against washing poultry (it increases your risk for food poisoning), I'd put money on bidets being less sanitary.

> We used to make jokes what if a TP user have diarrhea, how many trees will that be ?

Diarrhoea is pretty much water, so it cleans up with paper very well.

> If a bird shits on your hand will you use paper or water to clean it ?

That's a misleading analogy. Do you eat off your butt? If I got bird poo on my bare foot, I'd wipe it off in the dirt and move on. Most people shower every few days anyway. I don't care how clean my butt is, just as long as it doesn't smell and it doesn't itch.

(FYI, in English, a space is only used after end-of-sentence punctuation, not before. I've never understood why Indians consistently get this wrong.)

>> If a bird shits on your hand will you use paper or water to clean it ?

>That's a misleading analogy. Do you eat off your butt? If I got bird poo on my bare foot, I'd wipe it off in the dirt and move on. Most people shower every few days anyway. I don't care how clean my butt is, just as long as it doesn't smell and it doesn't itch.

I think this hits at the root of the disagreement. If I get bird poo on my bare foot, I am totally washing that off with water - i am not comfortable wiping it off with paper and then tracking that onto my hand/clothes. To each their own. I believe it is harder to get your butt not to stink or itch when just using paper. I use water/soap when possible, and fallback to paper when not, usually public washrooms - so I’m familiar with both, if that needs saying.

> (FYI, in English, a space is only used after end-of-sentence punctuation, not before. I've never understood why Indians consistently get this wrong.)

Interesting generalization. I haven’t seen too many Indians do that. But as long as you get the point the OP was trying to make.

Disclaimer: Am Indian.

Here's my WTF moment. My grandmother told me, she was born in 1901 as a kid on a rural PA farm. They used pages from a Sears wish book or dried corn cobs,out at the old out house!

Exactly. The downfall of Sears began with indoor plumbing and high-gloss paper in their catalogs.

At least in northern Europe it was common to use a stick to scrape. "More civilized" city dwellers used old newspapers.

> green

Well, increased water consumption has a lot of ecological problems as well. Plus most of us westerners would probably balk at using cold water, so we'd waste a lot of energy heating it up too.

> Well, increased water consumption has a lot of ecological problems as well.

Well, using paper costs more water than using water itself. Also, the ecological problems of using paper is far worse than using water alone[0][1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper#Environmental_con...

Absolutely, I wouldn't call TP "green" either.

Water has a really high heat capacity, meaning that it takes a lot of energy to heat.

Intuitively, how much water do you think the toilet paper of one bathroom visit would heat, if usef as fuel? (Answer: much less than what you would use to replace TP)

How much energy is used to make TP and transport it to your local store?

Sure, there's that. Otoh the water will alo have a big energy footprint before heating in the avg municipal water service case. But these things don't really change the order of magnitude energy difference that exists in the setup.

I got curious and did a napkin calculation.

A sheet of TP weights 1.5 grams and you might generously use 10 sheets per visit. Assuming fuel properties of wood, that's 250 kJ of heat energy when burned. That's enough to heat only 1.5 kg of 10C mains water to body temperature.

There’s a lot of water and energy used turning trees into paper as well that this neglects.

Also just thinking about how much energy is in the TP doesn’t account for shipping it around at all.

I have no idea what the energy balance is, i just think this thread had vastly oversimplified.

Even the water volume may or may not be an issue. If you live somewhere that water is precious it’s a much different concern than if your location uses surface water that just ends up back in the same river downstream after a trip through your plumbing, for example.

It doesn't take much water

My bidet uses less water than it uses to flush, which in turn is less water than was used in creating the paper. If you need it heated, it doesn’t take a lot of energy to heat that small amount of water (as it doesn’t need to heat continuously, at most just when you sit down).

Water consumption is not an ecological problem everywhere.

Water is not universally abundant though and much more costly to transport than paper or wood.

It's pretty abundant in developed countries that primarily rely on toilet papers, one would presume.

Water is a scarce resource in Australia, and it changes rather rapidly. Most cities are under permanent water restrictions, which include fitting water-saving flush systems to toilets.

Transporting water in pipes under pressure does not seem that expensive intuitively.

The western toilets we're talking about are flushed with water, so this seems to be a non-issue.

Exactly, a western toilet will use about 4-5litres for a flush. To clean yourself with water will use a mug or two of water.

The people in this thread talking about the increased use of water, are quite literally talking out of their arse

And the water spent growing the trees?

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