 If you don't want to be a part of that panic and also you don't want to continue wiping your butt with your money, then this video is for you and this is about 10 ways of how you can wipe your butt for free. Good day everyone, Rob Greenfield here and I am in Southern France. It's about getting just close to week three of the lockdown here and we're in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and for a lot of people the world is a drastically different place than it was just a few weeks or a few months ago and a lot of people are rethinking everything, rethinking their lives and the way they've designed their lives and so today I want to talk about an interesting thing and that is toilet paper. You know a lot of us actually spend a good amount of our hard earned money on wiping our butts. Think about that for a second, we work at a job, many of us that we don't like where we'd rather be doing something else to make money to wipe our butts and it's not a minimal amount of money. Over a lifetime some people spend thousands of dollars to wipe their butts and their family's butts. So let's think about this. How can we stop wiping our butts with our money? And right now is a really important time to talk about this and the reason why is that you've seen aisles of toilet paper, the shelves of toilet paper just being emptied because of panic shopping and panic buying and the thing is this is not an isolated incident. The emptying of the shelves of toilet paper is something that's happened often when people are in panic situations. It's something that's happened plenty of times in the past and it's something that's likely to happen plenty of times in the future. So if you don't want to be a part of that panic and also you don't want to continue wiping your butt with your money then this video is for you and this is about 10 ways of how you can wipe your butt for free. Important part about this is not chopping down trees. The environmental impact of toilet paper is huge. We chop down probably millions and millions of trees per year to make that toilet paper takes a huge amount of water to mill and to pulp those trees into toilet paper, a huge amount of electricity, most of which is made from fossil fuels and then to ship this stuff all over the place takes more fossil fuels. So lots of money, huge waste of environmental resources and is your butt secure at a time like this if you're dependent upon the toilet paper for some of us know. So first of all how you can wipe your butt for free. Number one my favorite is grow your own toilet paper. In Florida where I lived and grew and forged 100% of my food I grew a plant called a blue spur flower. The genus in species is Plecranthus Barbatus and super soft. It was softer than anything you can buy at the store. It actually is in the mint family so it's got a wonderful mint smell and I know a lot of people love their wet wipes. Well I've got a special surprise for you if you love your wet wipes. On a dewy morning where the mist settles on that it actually has these fine hairs that trap that moisture and turn it into a wet wipe. So you have toilet paper and wet wipe in one depending on the day you could probably even miss the thing if you wanted to turn it into a wet wipe on a dry day. Very strong, durable and I actually found that I could pick them and set them next to my toilet for up to a week with them still holding their sturdiness and just a great size too about you know something like that as the leaves. So not to mention the fact that they attract pollinators. I had hummingbirds on my blue spur flower and butterflies. I mean we're talking about a fantasy plant here but it's not a fantasy it's a real thing. Plecranthus Barbatus grows in about zones 8 through 10 so not the colder climates however there's plenty of other toilet paper plants that can be grown in gardens or is growing wildly. Mullin is one of them M-U-L-L-E-I-N and there's also lambs ear like the softness of a lambs ear. There are many different plants you can grow them. If you go to robgreenfield.org slash toilet paper I have listed the plants that you can grow and have information about the blue spur flower. So number two I'm going to get into some ways to use water. So water in some places costs money so this isn't technically completely free but it's as close to free as possible. So you have the bidet and this is something that millions of people around the world have used for a very long time. A bidet squirts water and cleans without the need for toilet paper without the need to wipe. Now if you don't have a bidet those probably cost a decent amount to get one installed. The good news is there's other options. There's little units that you can actually install right onto your toilet that are very inexpensive that turn your regular old flush toilet into a bidet. There's other options too though. So the next option is called a bum gun. This is number three and it's a little hose like nozzle and you just spray and it does the same job as a bidet but you actually have to spray it. And then number four is a little kettle. So in parts of the world I know in India I was actually introduced to this by an Indian roommate and you just have a little metal kennel. It could be plastic too and you hold this and then you pour it onto your butt and you wipe with the other hand to you know have the flowing water and then basically the poop particles would go right into the toilet and be flushed that way. So that is a little kettle. Now a very makeshift one that you can make is a plastic bottle and you poke holes in the cap of plastic water bottle and then you just squeeze that and that works really great for camping but it could be used at home as well but if you are camping that's a beautiful little you know super light. It can be crunched down even and it's your little portable butt sprayer toilet paper free way to clean your butt. Also of course just showering. Now if you're a once a day pooper and you like to take your showers once a day this is perfect. You just take your shower you just poop then take your shower clean in the shower. If you poop like five times a day like some people do five showers a day is not exactly ideal but that's five different ways that you can use water to clean your butt. And then there's also just if you have a sink right next to your toilet you can also just use that as well. You kind of need the ideal sink toilet location but plenty of billions of people around the world just use water. It's not crazy whatsoever and actually a lot of people think it's more hygienic because you actually get rid of the poop particles from your butt not like one of my former partners would say with toilet paper you mostly just like pack them on there not really get it fully clean. So those are some water ones. So let's see I'm going to go back to some paper forms. Number five is actually a way to find toilet paper for free and that is dumpster diving at places that sell toilet paper like pharmacies. I've done a lot of dumpster diving to raise awareness about food waste and what I discovered is that many pharmacies will throw out the 12 packs or the 24 packs of toilet paper because either they get crushed or because I think someone steals one and they don't sell a 24 pack. On the other side they don't sell a 23 pack they sell 24 packs they toss out the whole thing and I can't tell you how many times I've found 12 packs or 24 packs of perfectly good toilet paper completely on you as we're talking about just one removed or the package is just squished. So dumpster diving at pharmacies. Now another idea that I came up with that I've never put to the test would be dumpster diving at the factories that make this stuff because if they have like misprints or like the wrong shape they might be thrown away in sane amounts. Most industries do make mistakes and throw away lots of things and I would imagine the toilet paper industry is probably similar. So dumpster diving for toilet paper is an excellent way. The next one is something that some people won't be comfortable with just because of the social stigma. Oh well a lot of people wouldn't be okay with the social stigma of dumpster diving for toilet paper either but gotta get over those social stigmas instead of just rethinking social stigmas is wiping your butt with your money better than rethinking social stigmas. For me it's about thinking about how I can live in a way that's beneficial to the earth my community and myself remove myself from the broken systems and to do that I have to go against the grain of society generally because the grain of society is more of a consumeristic spend your money have to make money way of doing things. So side note back to this one a lot of fast food restaurants when you buy a meal they give you five ten napkins and most people don't use all those napkins so what they do is often they just leave everything on the table and there's a stack of napkins and the people that come down to take those trays they don't put those napkins back they throw them away so you can go to these restaurants just walk in and just grab those napkins not mooching in any way these are napkins that would have gone to the landfill take those home cut them up if you just take scissors and cut around the edges so that it's not connected in all those pieces you just have nice squares you can make a big stack of those squares right by your toilet and in you know 10 or 15 minutes you can get a month's supply of toilet paper by doing that another way to wipe your butt for free is newspaper now newspaper is not my favorite way it's not the softest it's not the softest I mean I love growing my own toilet paper so honestly the newspaper thing is something that I've rarely done but I have and I should say that every one of these suggestions that I'm giving I have done so these are personal first hand and also first hand of many many many people around the world so newspaper very simple an important thing to mention is that you can only put into your toilet what should be flushed what should be in that system so growing your own toilet paper probably most of those leaves not going to be good for the septic system newspaper not good for the septic system or the wastewater plant so things that aren't flushable you have to you there's a couple things you can do first of all ideally have a compost toilet and then any of those things can go right into the compost and create soil and that way you're solving a lot of other problems and creating creating nutritious soil for growing food but the other options with that are you can just throw it in the garbage can and you know so if you go to places like Mexico for example most of the toilets just have a garbage can next to them and they throw the toilet paper in there not flush it so this would be no different you would just have a garbage can for the toilet paper and you could throw that away but the better thing to do is you don't need to have a compost toilet you can just have next to your next to your toilet you can have a bin for these papers and then you can compost that paper so you can figure out a way where there's a will there is a way but you shouldn't flush those things I'm pretty certain of that now actually even better than those and I should have mentioned this one at the very top because this is a really really great way to do it and that is to have reusable wipes so cloth pads now there's a lot of people out there you who use cloth diapers for their children for their babies and this is no different than that you basically take cloth one thing you can do is you can take old t-shirts you cut them into squares like toilet paper and you wipe your butt with them and then you have a little you know basket next to your toilet and then you wash them so these are you know washable cloth reusable toilet paper makes a lot of sense again for some people that might seem kind of weird but the reality is is it works really well and a lot of people do it and it's no crazier than having to change kids diapers and it's very much in alignment with just using reusable diapers okay last couple now I'm going to transition on to more of the woodsy wiping these are things that I would do more likely in when I'm out in nature camping rather than at home so one is smooth rocks smooth smooth rocks are a wonderful way to wipe the butt you take that smooth rock you wipe and this is done using the leave no trace ethics so this is not pooping all over the place for other people to step in or anything like that you have to dig a hole bury this and have the poop be in the ground not exposed so you want to practice leave no trace ethics and just look that up in fact I will have a link to leave no trace in this in the description of this video and then the other one is leaves so finding the right leaves in nature you don't have to grow your own they are already there and you can forage those and use them and you can actually take homes take leaves home with you as well so those are some of the ways to wipe your butt for free I listed 10 plus a bonus 3 I think and one really important thing to say is that of course whatever way you do this you have to practice good hygiene poop can transfer can transfer worms it can transfer bacteria that can make you very sick so it's very important to practice good hygiene no matter what some people might watch this video and just think that I'm talking about really nearly pooping all over the place or not washing your hands after touching poop no that's not what I'm talking about at all every single thing that I've mentioned can be done in a hygienic way and a hygienic way that doesn't destroy the earth that we live on because toilet paper might seem hygienic but is it hygienic to chop down our forests burn fossil fuels and litter our interstates and our highways and our roads with trucks full of toilet paper is that really hygienic when you look at the bigger picture no it's not it isolates the ability for something to appear hygienic but when you extrapolate it out to the billions of millions of billions of people on earth it's not hygienic at all in fact it is a centerpiece to the you know destruction to the world that we are causing and so those are some of my suggestions for you all of these and links with more information is at robgreenfield.org slash toilet paper so I have information about the plants that I mentioned about dumpster diving for toilet paper about the the bum gun and the bidet and and all of that at robgreenfield.org slash toilet paper so right now this is a very poignant time to rethink things to change things and a great way is to start with your toilet paper something very near and dear to a lot of us if you got a lot out of this video if you learned a lot please share it if you have friends and family that you think should see it share it with them to help get this out in the YouTube algorithm click the like or the thumbs up and comment and if you have questions ask them and I'll try to answer a bunch of them and say hello and then of course if you are not subscribed to this channel if you got a lot out of this there's a lot more to come and you can watch my previous videos there's a lot there but subscribe and so here's to you here's to thinking outside of the box thinking deeper and along the lines of today not wiping our butts with our money anymore I love you all very much and I'm wishing you comfort and happiness and health and strength to make it through these times and not just make it through these times but to come out better human beings all right love you all see you soon