The Toto Washlet is a bidet in a toilet seat that you can attach to just about any toilet! What makes a bidet so eco-friendly? Using less toilet paper means saving trees, saving water, and avoiding the pollution associated with pulping, bleaching and shipping the countless rolls of the stuff that we consume every year.  The production of toilet paper takes literally billions of gallons of water on the front end, and then once it’s been flushed, it takes a lot of water to sort it out at the sewage treatment plant! By comparison, bidets use just a tiny jet of water to do the same task.  But don’t take just our word for it,  A couple of years ago now, Justin Thomas at Treehugger posted a great article on the subject, including some shocking statistics:

“We use 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper in the U.S. each year, this represents at least 15 million trees pulped. This also involves 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to produce the paper and 253,000 tons of chlorine for bleaching purposes. The manufacturing process requires about 17.3 terawatts of electricity annually. Also, there is the energy and materials involved in packaging and transporting the toilet paper to households across the country.

Toilet paper also constitutes a significant load on the city sewer systems, and water treatment plants. It is also often responsible for clogged pipes.”

For health and environmental reasons, households around the world are using  bidets like this one – and as we are with Dual Flush Toilets, the US is finally starting to catch up!

For those looking for an on-the-go solution, we just spotted this handy number: the Bidet in a Bottle!

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Blue Pine Wood is responsibly harvested from Oregon's forest land.

Ecohaus (a retailer of wood products from well-managed forests) and Sustainable Northwest Wood (a distributor of wood products from well-managed forests) have long partnered to bring a wide range of beautiful, Northwest, FSC certified wood products to a local audience. Our commitment to this joint-mission comes from our conviction that sustainable forestry can -and does- positively affect the lives of people in our community and beyond. 

An excellent example of this principlein motion is our Blue Pine, a unique offering from Sustainable Northwest Wood. The story behind this beautiful wood product has more to it than just the wood’s striking aesthetic, this is a story that has helped create jobs locally and improved forest health, too. 

Recently in Grant County, Oregon the closure of four out of the five sawmills in recent years resulted in layoffs for over 20% of the local workforce, devastating the local economy. In an effort to revive community enterprise while restoring forests; local environmental groups, loggers, federal agencies, and community leaders worked together to find common ground to remove standing dead trees, mostly blue pine, from local forests. This effort, whose focus on good stewardship and restoration, won them support from a diverse group of stakeholders and helped supply local mills with the timber they needed to stay open. Mike Billman of Malheur Lumber Company says “Working with local and national environmental organizations, Malheur Lumber Company has seen advancements in forest restoration projects on our local National Forest land. We expect that our collective efforts will improve forest health and ecological diversity while providing for forest related jobs and supplying raw materials to the forest products industry. We are excited to work with Sustainable Northwest Wood and to be an integral part of sustainable forest management!”

Through Ecohaus and Sustainable Northwest Wood, the wood from community initiatives like this one can, in-turn, become a strong and sustainable part of the buildings that house and sustain communities up and down the West Coast. 

West Coast wood = West Coast jobs 

Responsibly managed wood = Jobs for years to come. 

SW-COC-000023

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Imagine if the Whole World Used Sustainable Building Practices…  

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Ecohaus believes that by switching to sustainable building practices the world could stretch our natural resources further, diminish the occurrence of many chronic health problems, promote the growth of local economies, and decrease the release of harmful greenhouse gasses. Since 1992, Ecohaus has been supplying the Pacific Northwest with building and finish materials that are based on a holistic model of sustainability, incorporating consideration for the environmental, health and local impacts of the products we choose to carry.

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When we select our products, we research the entire lifecycle–from harvesting and manufacturing, to performance and longevity,through disposal, whether it’s re-cycling, repurposing or composting if biodegradable. We look for third-party certification, salvaged, or recycled materials. We look for products that will be durable and last a long time–in fact, many of our materials will outlast their conventional counterparts. We look for products that can be easily diverted from the landfill. For example, our carpet tiles can be turned into more carpet tiles, and our decking can be turned into mulch.

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When we think about the impacts of a product on people’s health, we look for materials that are as low in toxics as possible for the people making the material as well as the people living with it. Many adhesives and finishes contain harmful toxins that can cause poor indoor air quality and lead to problems like asthma, allergies and “sick building syndrome.” We offer alternatives to these products, and people feel the difference.

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When we think about the impacts that our choice of products can have on a local community we strive to find socially responsible, sustainably minded companies to work with. We look for products that make it possible for people to lift themselves up while managing their resources responsibly. For instance, we pay a fair price for wood from certified forests to incentivize people NOT to slash and burn their resources. We work with family owned and operated businesses. And we work with owner/operators in the Pacific Northwest.

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Imagine a world where we use materials that we find close to home, where we keep our air and water clean, where our built environment helps support our natural environment – this is an “Ecohaus Future.”

Imagine if we managed our resources so that we could draw from them forever.

 Ecohaus got some big news this past Earth Day: we have received King County’s prestigious Green Globe Award for being a Leader In Market Development for Recyclable Materials! Our founder, Matt Freeman Gleason personally accepted the award from King County Councilman Dow Constantine. It was a great event! We were all inspired by hearing the stories of the other local businesses who have been forging a path toward sustainability in our region.

Ecohaus has been around for 17 years, buying and selling products that contain post-consumer and post-industrial waste. Our most popular products from recycled materials are our Paperstone Countertops (made from recycled paper) and our Ultratouch Cotton Insulation (made of the waste cotton from denim factories.) But we have lots more! Recycled glass countertops, and tiles; blow-in insulation made from recycled newspapers; flooring and countertops salvaged from old barns or barrels; flooring made from the waste cork of wine-bottle-stopper fabrication… the list goes on and on.

We are committed to carrying products with recycled content because, that way, useful material is diverted from the waste stream AND we can diminish the need for raw material. Additionally, many of these products are made locally – right here in Washington State.

To read more about what King County has to say about us, please click here.

Our Fouder and members of the marketing team with Councilmember Dow Constantine