Have you ever thought about what you use to wipe your butt? Probably toilet paper most of the time, maybe a leaf once or twice if you were caught hiking unawares. Maybe you’re loyal to a certain brand. If you are, then I urge you to consider boycotting Procter & Gamble, the owners of tissue paper brands such as Bounty, Charmin and Puffs. P&G uses zero recycled materials in its tissue products and is destroying Canada’s boreal forest to make a product that we use once and then literally flush down the toilet.

The Canadian boreal forest is one of the largest remaining forests in the world, is home to thousands of diverse species and stores an enormous amount of carbon, helping to regulate our climate. Hundreds of Indigenous communities live in and depend upon the boreal forest, and this deforestation is both undermining and threatening their way of life.

P&G needlessly cuts down millions of acres of forest a year when it could be following the lead of tissue companies like Seventh Generation, Trader Joe’s and Natural Value, who all use recycled materials and other sustainable sources. Next time you find yourself in need of tissue or toilet paper, I implore you, reach for one of the aforementioned sustainable brands on the shelf, not a Procter & Gamble product. Of course, if you want to take it one step more sustainable, there are leaves all around us, just begging for a higher purpose.

— Emma Greenlee