You need a bidet, but not for the reason you think

[Ubiquitous]

“This is not no regular toilet bowl,” gushes DJ Khaled on Instagram,
fawning over a new toilet that rapper Drake sent to his home. “This is
the most amazing toilet bowl I ever seen in my life.”

The Neorest NX2 toilet is a $21,181 porcelain throne. Designed by the
Japanese company Toto, it features a remote control, heated seat,
deodorizer, night light, and, as DJ Khaled says enthusiastically,
“water that splashes up” after you’re done.

In other words, it’s a very pricey bidet. Khaled’s paean may be the
high-water mark of the bidet’s profile in American pop culture — so
far. Once viewed as an overseas oddity, the bathroom fixture has
exploded in popularity over the past three years. Retailers report
sales leaping tenfold during the pandemic, and remaining strong.

The vast majority of Americans still exclusively use toilet paper,
though. For many, the bidet remains a fusty porcelain basin vaguely
associated with the French. But the technology has evolved.
Multibillion-dollar incumbents like Toto, as well as newcomers such as
Tushy and Luxe, have stormed the U.S. market, along with a flood of
cut-rate manufacturers on Amazon. Bidets that promise to work with
almost any toilet are now within reach of every American: Simple
versions can be had for just $30.

For the world’s northern forests, that’s great news. The pines, birches
and aspens that fringe the Northern Hemisphere are a primary source of
virgin pulp to make toilet paper, particularly older, mature trees with
longer fibers that manufacturers want to create an ultrasoft texture.

And no one buys more TP than Americans. The typical person in the
United States uses about 24 rolls of toilet paper per year. That’s
roughly three times more than Europeans — and among the highest per
capita consumption of any country. Were the country to switch to
bidets, millions of trees would likely remain standing every year.

I bought one in 2019 and never looked back.

But can bidets persuade Americans to set aside their rolls of Charmin
Ultra Soft Cushiony Touch? It’s an easier sell than you think.

Water, not paper, has long been the world’s gold standard for cleaning
up behinds. The Quran details prescriptions for cleaning with water in
the bathroom. More recently, a 1975 hygiene bill in Italy made it
illegal not to have at least one bidet in every public lodging, reports
The Guardian.

Although the bidet is thought to have been invented in France in the
1600s, Japan has embraced the device like few other nations, with an
estimated 79 percent of households owning at least one.

In the United States, the bidet has barely cracked the mainstream. Our
historical prejudice against the apparatus dates back to World War II,
when many service members’ first encounters with it were in a French
brothel. That created an association with sex work.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, has embraced the concept, with the
bidet evolving into myriad forms. I encountered the most basic version
for the first time living in Southeast Asia: a handheld sprayer on the
side of the toilet, similar to a sink faucet with a hose. The cheapest
ones can cost just a few dollars.

But Japan ushered the French invention into the modern era. In 1980,
Toto released the Washlet, integrating the bidet into the toilet seat
itself. The underlying technology is simple. A small “wand,” or
sprayer, extends from a housing under the seat to direct a precise
stream of water that cleans the buttocks. When the water is turned off,
the self-cleaning wand retracts behind a shield.

But things have gotten pretty extravagant from there. Today, Toto’s
high-end models offer adjustable water temperature, air drying, a
heated seat, bowl cleaning, personalized settings, a night light,
remote controls, and even an automatic air deodorizer. More than 60
million of the devices have been sold around the world since 1980. Just
not many in the United States.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, few Americans were interested in the
fixture. “Bidets weren’t really gaining traction,” says Bill Strang, a
Toto executive in the United States. After March 2020’s toilet paper
shortages, bidets climbed the e-commerce rankings, coming in just
behind items such as disposable gloves, masks, hand sanitizer and
toilet paper, reports Toto. “We sold out of our product in about four
weeks in North America,” Strang says. Remote work has increased this
momentum. As people spent more time in their home offices and
bathrooms, they poured money into “refreshing” their homes — and
behinds.

Start-ups such as Tushy have capitalized on this wave of interest,
tailoring the often-complicated Japanese models to suit American
tastes. Tushy makes several models starting at $69. The base model
offers controls such as spray angle and intensity, as well as
irreverent marketing: “Save Your A--, Save Your Money, Save the
Planet.” Founder Miki Agrawal says sales jumped fivefold during the
pandemic. “It went from being something that seems weird, shameful and
awkward to a boastful thing you show your friends,” says Agrawal, who
says Tushy has more than 1.4 million customers.

Should you join these new converts? There are three reasons for taking
the plunge: the environment, savings and performance.

The main one is to reduce clear-cutting mature forests. Every year,
Americans flush the equivalent of millions of trees down the toilet.
Much of this toilet paper comes from trees logged in Canada’s species-
rich boreal forests, the vast landscape of plants and wetlands growing
below the Arctic Circle. Nearly a quarter of the world’s last intact
forest landscapes are in this region, says the Natural Resources
Defense Council, storing about the same amount of carbon as three
decades’ worth of fossil fuel emissions.

By the time it reaches your bathroom, every roll of toilet paper has
used up an estimated 1.5 pounds of wood and more than 6 gallons of
water.

Bidets, meanwhile, require about one-eighth of a gallon per use, a
fraction of the water required to make the amount of toilet paper
needed for the same purpose. And since bidets tend to cut household
consumption of TP by about 80 percent, they’re “a great alternative to
using tissue products,” says the NRDC.

It can also pay off in less than one year. A paper industry analysis by
the research firm RISI found Americans consume about 24 rolls of TP per
year on average — some estimates put it above 85 rolls. At today’s
prices, the typical person would spend at least $30 annually on toilet
paper. Since the cheapest bidet seats sell for about the same price,
it’s an investment that can pay off in the same year. Savings for
families are even larger.

In my experience, bidets just work better. You can never get as clean
with toilet paper, or even wet wipes, as rinsing with water. “From a
hygiene perspective, it just clearly makes sense,” says Evan Goldstein,
an anal surgeon in New York City. Bidets also can reduce the risk of
illness, from E. coli to urinary tract infections.

When I finally thought about it, the way we use toilet paper didn’t
make much sense either. We don’t shower by rubbing paper towels across
our bodies. We don’t scrub our hands with dry scraps of tissue. Yet for
the most demanding cleanup job in our daily lives, we employ a few thin
sheets of paper.

Toilet paper is not going away. Nor should it, necessarily. But we have
far better choices than standard TP available to us, from bamboo to
recycled tissue, along with a bidet. It’s a purchase that sends a
message about what options we want in the store. “Consumers have a lot
of power here,” writes Shelley Vinyard, a boreal forests campaign
director at the NRDC, who says companies are starting to make products
without virgin tree fiber in response to demand.

One day, we may come to see wiping our bums with extra-soft toilet
paper from virgin forests as we do smoking cigarettes: mainly a good
idea for the people who sell the products.

--
Let's go Brandon!

[~justusloonz~]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2023 21:05:03 -0400, Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net>
wrote:

>
>In other words, it’s a very pricey bidet. Khaled’s paean may be the
>high-water mark of the bidet’s profile in American pop culture — so
>far.

It's Poop Culture now. Next thing you know, Reality TV will have the
story about RV's with bidets! Competitions of the newest places to
take #2 in that pricey loo.

To boldly go where no man has gone before! - Capt Kirk

ObT: Bonus Points if done in Poopoo, Hawaii
~justusloonz~