Consider your toilet paper.
Chances are it’s white and fluffy.
If you’re the average consumer, you’ll use a mile and a half in a year, the equivalent of 105 rolls. And the color you prefer? Pearly white.
But it doesn’t start out that way. Millions of trees are churned into wood chips, then rendered into a brown mash.
Then a harsh chemical compound, chlorine dioxide, is added to the mix. It bleaches the pulp, making it ready to be cooked and rolled into sheets of fluffy white toilet paper.
That transformation doesn’t come without a cost.
What’s left is a blend of chemicals and water that is filtered, treated and then drained into Port Gardner Bay.
Most of the chemicals are removed to levels so minute that machines haven’t been invented yet that can detect the chemicals, some of which are measured at 10 parts per quadrillion.
The emissions don’t exceed federal and state standards, but environmentalists have lashed out at Kimberly-Clark Corp., saying its Everett mill should stop releasing all toxic pollutants into the bay.
Environmental rule changes have forced the mill to dramatically clean up its act since it opened in 1929. Since the 1960s, Kimberly-Clark has spent more than $100 million meeting steadily more stringent federal and state standards at the mill.
Soon to be added to that list of improvements is a $52 million pipeline that plunges into 350-foot-deep water a mile out into the bay. There, it will dilute the impact the wastewater has on marine life. Kimberly-Clark is sharing the cost of the project with Everett and Marysville.
The idea of getting Kimberly-Clark and the cities to work together on a pipeline was hatched over a beer in 1997, shortly after the state asked Everett to figure out how to divert some of its waste away from the Snohomish River. It happened on a Friday afternoon at Buck’s American Cafe in Everett.
Chris Isenberg, now manager of Kimberly-Clark’s Everett pulp mill, and Robert Waddle, then a city environmental manager, each discovered that the other was talking about building a pipeline that would pump their wastewater deep into the bay.
Working together would cure an environmental headache by putting their treated releases in a place where it would cause less harm to marine wildlife.
"Both of us knew we had long-term issues we had to deal with, and a beer or two tends to open the imagination a bit," Isenberg said.
What they came up with was a plan to build a 6,000-foot-long pipeline that they would share, saving money for both. Marysville joined the discussion soon after.
To Isenberg, the cooperative spirit behind the pipeline project demonstrates how his company has been a good environmental neighbor in Everett.
"One of Kimberly-Clark’s objectives is always to act as a responsible steward of environmental resources," Isenberg said. "We believe we demonstrate our commitment here in Everett to that objective through our ongoing investments, and through a responsible approach to the day-to-day operation of our facility."
Still, Kimberly-Clark’s environmental improvements have been largely forced by federal and state regulations that have steadily grown tougher over the last 40 years.
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Building a new pipeline allows Kimberly-Clark to eliminate three aging wastewater outfalls, two of which are more than 50 years old and are made of wood.
Currently, most of the wastewater from the three partners is either dumped into the bay just off the backside of Kimberly-Clark’s plant, or released into the Snohomish River delta.
Everett’s treated releases now flow into the Snohomish River near I-5, while Marysville’s are being dumped into Steamboat Slough. Although the pipeline will reduce the amount of wastewater the two cities release into the delta, it won’t eliminate everything.
Releases from Kimberly-Clark and the two cities are heavily treated, nothing like the raw sewage that poured into the bay in the 1950s.
As part of the project, Marysville will build a pipeline to tie in with Everett’s wastewater system, which will then connect to the new pipeline at the mill.
Moving the release point to deeper water would make it easier for the treated water to be diluted.
That makes it less likely that the remaining organic material in the treated water will cause problems for fish and other marine life as it decomposes. Decomposing organic material sucks oxygen out of the water, making it difficult for fish to breathe.
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Toilet paper is something previous generations would never have considered. In 1857, the first commercially available sheets of toilet paper were produced, but there were few takers.
"Americans could not comprehend wasting money on perfectly clean paper when their bathrooms and outhouses were stocked with pamphlets, fliers, store catalogs and newspapers," according to Charles Panati, author of "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things."
But when toilets started to migrate indoors in the 1880s, two savvy brothers, Edward and Clarence Scott, stepped in to carve out a niche making toilet paper.
By the 1920s, toilet paper was a must, and mills were springing up across the nation, including in Everett.
Today, Kimberly-Clark bleaches, cooks and rolls out steaming hot bundles of toilet paper. Every day, more than 800 mill workers tend to massive a Dr. Seuss-like assembly line contraption that churns out Scott Tissue, Scott Towels, Kleenex, Cottonelle bathroom tissue and other personal paper products.
The 220,000 tons of products that the factory distributes each year end up in stores throughout the western United States and Canada.
The company spends $275 million a year on salaries, materials, supplies, taxes and other costs — and much of that money is pumped back into the area’s economy, plant manager Scott Helker said.
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Using something so soft and white as Scott Tissue comes at a cost to the environment, some say.
Manufacturing the products requires the use of harsh chemicals, which are difficult to eliminate from the plant’s waste stream.
But until consumers are willing to embrace brown toilet paper, Kimberly-Clark officials can legitimately argue that they need to keep using a bleaching agent, a potentially toxic chemical when released into the environment.
Kimberly-Clark’s releases of chlorine dioxide — the chemical used to make brown paper white — are tiny. But views differ on how dangerous those tiny amounts are to the bay.
The byproducts of using chlorine dioxide include trace levels of dioxin and furan, two highly toxic chemicals. The two compounds build up in fish, causing a variety of health problems that can reduce reproduction .
Although Kimberly-Clark’s emissions meet federal and state standards, environmentalists argue that the company still needs to improve.
Five environmental groups banded together to oppose a new environmental permit that Kimberly-Clark is seeking from the state. The activists argue that the company should be forced to stop using chlorine dioxide.
"I think they have a long way to go to create a substantially cleaner mill for the future," said Laurie Valeriano, policy director for the Washington Toxics Coalition, one of the five groups. "It’s not time to let them sit on their hands and say, ‘We’re done.”’
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State environmental officials are concerned that traces of dioxin and other pollutants are making their way into the environment, but they say it’s hard to gauge the harm Kimberly-Clark’s emissions are doing to marine life, especially since there are other ways dioxin gets into the bay.
"We know it’s toxic at extremely low levels," said Merley McCall, pulp-mill unit supervisor with the state Department of Ecology.
The state wants Kimberly-Clark to eventually shift away from using chlorine dioxide. In a proposed environmental permit, Kimberly Clark is being asked to study whether it is economically feasible to use a chlorine-free process.
Tulalip Tribes officials are also concerned about the mill’s use of bleaching chemicals. They also say the multiple locations where the new pipeline will empty into the bay are too close to the Dungeness crabs they harvest to eat and sell.
Kimberly-Clark might not be able to stay in business if it were required to eliminate every molecule of emissions, Ecology Department spokeswoman Caitlin Cormier said.
"We’re looking for a reasonable balance that will allow the plant to continue to function, and that meets the standards of the state and the EPA," she said.
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An alternative is for people to buy unbleached toilet paper, which industry officials say consumers don’t want.
"There are probably a few hundred environmentalists in Seattle who want to buy brown toilet paper," said Dick Abrams, environmental manager of Kimberly-Clark’s Everett plant.
There is an alternative to bleached toilet paper, however, but it can be difficult to find, expensive and some say kind of flimsy.
Not found at most grocery stores, eco-friendly toilet paper is available in health food stores and other specialty shops. It can cost more than a dollar a roll — twice as much as a typical roll of two-ply toilet paper.
For those willing to shell out the extra cash, the good news is they’ll get toilet paper that arguably resembles a roll of Scott Tissue. It’s brightened with hydrogen peroxide.
"There is no dioxin created in a process that uses hydrogen peroxide," said Jeffrey Hollender, president of Seventh Generation, a Vermont manufacturer of unbleached toilet paper.
However, federal environmental officials say the alternative process isn’t without drawbacks. It requires using 10 percent more wood, which means more trees must be cut down if recycled paper isn’t used. They also say converting to the process is expensive, especially for older mills.
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Kimberly-Clark says customers wouldn’t buy such toilet paper because it’s be too flimsy. Industry research also indicates that such a change at the Everett pulp mill would be expensive.
So, for now, Kimberly-Clark plans to keep bleaching toilet paper white with chlorine dioxide.
While willing to continue work at lowering the company’s pollution emissions, Abrams said the improvements required of Kimberly-Clark need to be reasonable. Abrams said the mill’s emissions of most pollutants are 100 times less than when the plant first opened.
Still, he said the mill has work to do, saying that the new pipeline is just one step toward lowering emissions at the mill.
When completed next spring, the pipeline will be buried and the beach where the pipeline enters the bay will be restored. A new walking trail will give the public access to the waterfront, which has historically been used by industry.
That will usher in a new era.
"The choke-collar string of industrial sites on the water side of the railroad tracks has had a tendency to narrow the options that people have seen for the waterfront," said Peggy Toepel, co-chair of the Everett Shorelines Coalition. "We haven’t paid enough attention on how to give people access to their water — until now."
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