Yesterday I posted a video about this because I found it fascinating and wanted to share, but it fell short of the rules and I’m not mad at that. But I still think it’s valuable enough to be posted, so I have gone for a write-up of the video instead.

So the subject at hand is the evolution of smart toilets and in particular, water-cleansing seats (bidets). I guess the attempt is to reframe how we look at our bathroom habits and that we should factor things in from an environmental perspective. When you consider the ecological savings, particularly regarding water and ancient forests, suddenly the impact of something so central to our lives is staggering. The technology now available actually aligns with building resilient, sustainable systems, which is what we all want.

The current industrial scale of toilet paper production is an actual environmental disaster. In the UK alone, we consume 8.5 billion rolls every single year (averaging around 127 rolls per person, which is more than double the European average). To sustain just the UK’s habit, an estimated 7 million trees are felled annually.

Crucially, this wood isn’t just coming from sustainable tree farms. A massive portion of global toilet paper is pulped directly from old-growth boreal forests. These forests are both essential carbon sinks and vital habitats for biodiversity. If you’re anything like me, you see this happening in the Amazon in Brazil for cattle farms and it breaks your heart, but this is equally widespread. It happens in the Canadian Boreal forest and worldwide. We are literally shredding ancient, irreplaceable ecosystems just to manufacture single-use dry paper that is flushed away seconds after it touches the skin.

When I watched the bidet video, my initial question was: doesn’t that use more water though? It didn’t help that I just watched a Mrwhosetheboss video where YouTubers recommended him tech, and he was given a portable travel bidet. He failed with the demonstration, failing to clean chocolate off of a doll’s bum. And that’s the most common argument against water-cleansing seats, that they waste water. A quick check will easily show you that the numbers completely disprove this, especially when you look at how far the water goes. But preconceptions are going to preconcept.

Here is the actual breakdown of the numbers for those interested:

• Manufacturing one roll of toilet paper requires approximately 140 litres of water, alongside nearly 0.70 kg of wood, and massive amounts of chlorine for bleaching.
• Using a water-cleansing seat uses roughly 0.5 litres per wash.
• A standard UK toilet roll contains about 200 sheets. With the average person using roughly 8 sheets per visit, a single roll lasts for approximately 25 visits.
• In contrast, the 140 litres of water used to manufacture that single roll of paper would power a water-cleansing seat for 280 visits (140 ÷ 0.5).

That means the water required just to make a single roll of dry paper could power a water seat for over 11 times as many bathroom trips. When a household makes the switch, toilet paper consumption typically drops by over 80%. Using water at the point of cleaning drastically reduces our overall global water footprint.

Relying on imported toilet paper (speaking for the UK) makes communities highly vulnerable to supply chain shocks, as we all remember from the pandemic. The empty supermarket shelves were both hilarious and frightening, with people literally fighting over loo roll. But we do have a view of the alternative. In countries where smart toilets are already the default (over 80% adoption in some parts of the world), consumption is so low that paper has mutated into highly compressed, ultra-efficient formats. In Japan, some office buildings even use localised recycling machines that turn shredded waste paper into usable rolls on-site, completely cutting off reliance on industrial pulp imports.

And it’s not even just about the environmental benefits. Beyond those, the hardware itself is evolving to democratise health tracking. The newest generation of smart toilets features built-in optical line sensors that scan stool and categorise it using the medical Bristol scale. Others use contact-free optical sensing to analyse urine for hydration and wellness markers. There’s even a toilet that lets family know if someone hasn’t used the toilet in twelve hours, so you can monitor family from afar. Sorry, I’m a carer, I care about stuff like this.

But I digress. Instead of flushing away health data every day, these new toilets can act as a passive health checkpoint, sending data directly to a local smartphone app.

I say all that to say this: the transition away from toilet paper isn’t just about hygiene on its own (shush, I’m paraphrasing the video here). It’s a systemic shift away from a highly resource-hungry, chemical-heavy industry. By adopting bidets (sorry, I know it’s a disservice to call them bidets), water-cleansing technology, we can drastically reduce the felling of trees, save billions of litres of fresh water, and build locally resilient homes that actively monitor our wellbeing. In my opinion, it’s a great example of technology working to reduce our footprint rather than expanding it.