Extra-soft toilet paper is more harmful to the environment than gas-guzzling cars, campaigners claimed yesterday.
An obsession by Americans for the expensive quilted and multi-ply paper means that thousands of trees are being cut down for the U.S. market every year.
More than 98 per cent of toilet paper in the country comes from virgin forests and uses hardly any recycled materials.
Toxic fumes are also released into the atmosphere because of the chemicals used in paper pulp manufacture.
In Europe, up to 40 per cent of toilet paper comes from recycled products.
Scientist Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defence Council, said: 'This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous.
'Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age.
'Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution.
'I really do think it is overwhelmingly an American phenomenon.
'People just don't understand that softness equals ecological destruction.'
Greenpeace has launched an ecological guide to toilet paper in an effort to counter the multi-million pound marketing budget of luxury toilet paper manufactures.
Lindsey Allen, Greenpeace's forestry campaigner, said: 'We have this myth in the U.S. that recycled is just so low quality, it's like cardboard.'
Americans use more paper than paper than any other country - about three times more than people in the UK, and 100 times more than the average person in China.
Toilet paper manufacturer Kimberly-Clark denies that its products are damaging the environment.
Spokesman Dave Dixon said his company used paper from sustainably farmed forests in Canada.
He added: 'For bath tissue Americans in particular like the softness and strength that virgin fibres provides.'
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